


counterpart

by cerasium



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:35:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29294523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerasium/pseuds/cerasium
Summary: Enemy, apprentice, friend. Associate is too clinical, lover sounds too personal, partner too enduring. Confidante? Comrade? Companion?There is no word for what Levi is, to him. What do you call an equal other than an equal?A counterpart, Erwin thinks.-from ACWNR to end of season 3
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith, Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 76
Kudos: 327





	1. Chapter 1

It’s raining. Erwin is half-soaked from his walk from the stables. There’s a light shining from his office, four rooms up and two along; a shadow at the window. It hides when it sees him staring.

The walls of headquarters are packed stone. The oak steps, two flights up, and the hallway to his office smell like gas. It always smells like gas in the officers’ quarters; it’s reassuring now, after all this time. It’s something he associates so tightly with coming home.

The door to his office is ajar. He thinks the man knows he’s watching. He can’t imagine Levi has ever been snuck up on anyone, let alone someone he tried – and if Erwin’s instincts are right, is still trying – to kill. Still, he’s a fascination of conflicts: one of the smallest men Erwin has ever seen, yet probably the strongest. A man with a foul temper, a sour disposition, who risks his life for his friends. And a man who comes from filth yet keeps everything – from the hair on his head to the tips of his blades – meticulously clean.

“Are you having fun?” Erwin asks him, leaning himself against the frame of the door.

Levi does not even grace him with a look over his shoulder. Instead, he keeps scrubbing at the floorboards in front of Erwin’s desk, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and rag tucked into his back pocket.

“No,” Erwin agrees with silence, “I don’t think you’ve ever had fun a day in your life, have you?”

Levi stops his scrubbing and straightens his back. He dips the brush into the bucket of soapy water, slaps the excess off into his palm. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Captain,” he says in that low, long drawl he has, “but you don’t strike me as the type, either.”

Erwin raises his brows, folds his arms. “Oh really?” He asks. “What gave it away?”

Levi sniffs a little, rubs at his nose with his thumb, and goes back to scrubbing vigorously. “I know your soldiers are drinking in the kitchens. Why don’t you join them?”

“Why don’t you?” Erwin enquires, innocently.

“Because,” Levi answers, with that same unbothered voice, “my ass-wipe Captain ordered me to spend all night cleaning his office.”

“Well,” Erwin advises, “you did try to kill him. Some might say this is fairly lenient punishment, as far as they go. Besides,” he continues, crossing the threshold, drawing his finger along what was once a dusty fireplace, “you’re very good at it."

He turns to smile down at him, but Levi is glaring at his boots. “You are tracking mud,” he says behind gritted teeth, “across my floor.”

“My floor,” Erwin automatically corrects, but looking down he sees Levi is right. “Oh dear,” he sighs. Outside, it’s still raining heavily, slants of water smacking off of the window. “Well, you can fix that after.”

Levi throws the brush into the bucket. “That’s not fair,” he snarls, “that’s not what we _agreed.”_

“I don’t seem to remember us agreeing anything,” Erwin says lightly, crossing the floor to stand by the bookshelves. Levi hasn’t dusted here yet. “I ordered you, didn’t I?”

Erwin frowns. While the shelf is dusty, it looks like one book has been pulled out and replaced – the line of dust is less thick there, exactly the width of its spine. He turns his head and squints at the title: _A History of the Noble Houses of Wall Rose, Vol. 2._ As boring a book as any of the bland, historical tomes his father left him, all of them filled with lies at worst and uncertainty at best. But still. It is a book. And he can’t think why anyone, let alone Levi, would be interested in its contents.

He carefully slides it off of the shelf. Ah. He thinks he’s found the problem. Sighing, he holds it open, and flips it upside down; a short knife clatters to the floor by his feet, fallen from a hollowed-out divot carved into it’s pages.

Erwin stares at him, unimpressed.

“I have no idea how that got there,” Levi lies, not even pretending to care.

“Really? It looks like someone, in the last three hours, carved out a space for a knife and then put it back on the shelf.”

“Yeah. Sure seems that way.”

Erwin reaches down and picks up the knife: it’s nothing you would find here, in the Survey Corps quarters. It’s practically rudimentary, like it was sharpened out of an old skewer. If it hit you directly to the throat, you’d probably die, at least. “And it looks like the kind of weapon lazy thugs use, especially in the underground. Why would that be?”

“I’m many things, Captain,” Levi says, smugly, “but please, don’t call me lazy.”

“So it would seem,” Erwin recounts, “in the last three hours – the time exactly you have been in my office – someone has snuck in, with a lousy weapon, carved by an underground criminal – the exact kind you were, in fact, up until a few months ago – and left it in a book, hidden, as if waiting for a perfect opportunity. Does this sound accurate to you?”

Levi shrugs a shoulder. “If you say it like that, sure.”

Erwin sighs again, carefully closes the book, and sets it on the edge of his desk. “And to think,” he says, flipping the knife in his hand and holding it out, hilt first to Levi, “those poor noble families of Wall Rose.”

Levi takes the knife. “What are you talking about?” He asks, frowning up at him.

“The book you desecrated. _A History of the Noble Houses of Wall Rose._ The second volume, if you can believe – I doubt we even needed a first. I suppose you chose wisely.”

“Right,” Levi agrees, and then looks away, quickly. He stuffs the knife in his back pocket next to the spare rag.

Erwin trails his fingers under the edges of his desk. Levi really is incredibly detailed orientated; not a hint of dust, not even beneath the leather placemat where he writes his letters. He grips the back of his chair. “Is there any particular reason you’re so good at cleaning?”

“I don’t like filth,” Levi answers, sitting up on his knees. As if to prove his point, he grimaces at his hand, rubs it down on his make-shift apron. “I don’t understand how you people live like this.”

“Oh?” Erwin was always under the impression his quarters were fairly clean, as far as these things go.

“Spiders in the corner, ash under the fireplace. What is it? Are you just so used to having someone do it for you that you don’t even notice? How can you even focus knowing that there’s mud under your boots, dirt under your nails.”

“Then you can clean my boots,” Erwin tells him. “After you’ve finished the bookshelf, and the floor.”

“I’m not your slave, Erwin,” Levi snarls. “You’ve got a funny fucking way of trying to – trying to inspire confidence.”

“I’m not trying to inspire confidence,” he tells him, opening one of the drawers of his desk and casting an eye over its contents. “You never went through training. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“What?” Levi sneers, “Like how to sit, stay, come like a dog?”

Erwin shuts the drawer with a gentle click. “Yes, actually.”

He’s trying to keep him preoccupied, is the truth. Never in his life has he seen a soldier take down a titan the way Levi took down the ones that ate his friends. Erwin thinks about them: the girl had been young. She had seemed sweet. The boy had been handsome – from what little Erwin had seen of him, he seemed reasonable and talented. Part of him wonders whether they were extraordinary; Levi is extraordinary, and he can’t imagine him devoting himself to people who aren’t. Or maybe they were just his friends. Either way the end result is the same: Levi had come back with an emptiness behind his eyes that had lingered for far too long. Better he cleans than turn his attention elsewhere.

He carefully thumbs through the stack of papers of his desk, checks to see if any are missing. Levi is not stupid. He wouldn’t steal papers straight from Erwin’s desk on the night he leaves him alone in his office – that’s far too obvious. Although the knife-in-book was a little on the nose, too.

“I don’t suppose you chanced a look at any of these,” Erwin asks him, holding up his papers. “It would be a crime, you know.”

“I didn’t.” Levi stands and hauls the bucket to the door. Erwin watches him. He senses that he’s telling the truth and tries to think why; how does he hold himself differently compared to when he’s telling a lie?

“Not that there’s anything particularly interesting, of course. Set the fire, would you? I don’t think it’s going to stop raining.”

“Don’t you have a bed you could be lying in right now?” Levi mutters, tossing coal into the grate. “Or even better, a ditch?”

“Oh I’m sorry,” Erwin asks genially, “am I getting in your way?” He props his feet up on his desk and sees Levi’s eyes near bulge out of his head. “What, no boots allowed on the table?”

“Do you know how much that desk alone is worth?” Levi asks him.

“Probably more than you’ve ever owned,” Erwin guesses. He squints at the neat lettering printed on top of the envelope in his hand. “Ah,” he says, pleased, “my mother has written.”

“I’m so happy for you.” Levi rolls his eyes, feeding wood into the flames.

He briefly scans the letter. “She says there’s been a good harvest, and that – oh, how lovely. Cousin Jenny is expecting.”

He watches Levi over the top of the page, the side profile of his face as he pokes at the fire with a stick. He doesn’t appear to be listening, caught up with staring at the flames. It almost makes him look healthy, all that orange glow.

“Does your mother write to you, Levi?” He asks him conversationally.

“My mother’s dead,” he answers, morosely. He’s still staring at the fire. It spits.

“I see,” Erwin says. “Of course. My condolences.”

Levi snorts, humourlessly. “You’re twenty years too late for condolences.”

Erwin takes his feet of off his desk, straightens his clothes. “Here,” he says, “file the ones marked from the Interior. Burn the rest.”

He leaves them on the edge of his desk and opens a drawer, pulls out his pen and ink and neat square of cream-laden paper. He likes to use the nice paper for his mother. It makes her so happy when a letter comes with the royal crest. He smiles at the thought of it, her sitting alone at the kitchen table, bread in the oven and sleeves rolled up to her elbows –

Levi is standing in front of his desk. Erwin looks at him. “The letters,” he prompts.

He picks them up, hesitates. “How do I know which ones to burn?” He asks.

Erwin frowns. “Well, the ones that are signed from Interior officers or ask for a response should be filed. The rest are nonsense.” He sighs, waves his hand, “Yes, you’re allowed to read them, I won’t bite your head off, it’s an order.”

Levi stares down at the papers in his hands. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. How do I – “ he clears his throat, “how do I…”

He trails off. Erwin looks up at him again, exasperated. The tips of his ears are red. He’s staring at the papers like they hold the secret to life itself.

Erwin blinks. “Levi,” he says, slowly.

Levi looks at him. Or – just slightly through him, in fact. He seems very tired, suddenly. “I can’t tell the difference,” he says, shortly.

“The difference between the letters,” Erwin clarifies.

“Yes.” Levi’s voice is stiff. “What do you want me to say?”

“I’m sorry, you mean to say – you can’t read?”

Levi’s hand darts for the knife in his back pocket; Erwin just watches him, doesn’t even flinch. “And what about it?” He hisses. “Got something to say about it?”

“I think you should shut the door,” Erwin commands. “Sit.”

“I think you should stop giving me pointless fucking orders,” Levi replies. He does not change his stance. Erwin sighs, stands, and walks past him, shuts the door himself. Locks it from the inside so they cannot be disturbed.

He pulls out the chair opposite his desk. “ _Sit,”_ he says again, forcefully. This time, Levi does.

Erwin pulls out sheets of paper and lays on them on the table. He draws a line across the top of the page and prints letters neatly in uppercase. “Do you know the alphabet?” He asks him while he writes.

Levi’s silence tells him the answer.

“Fine,” Erwin accommodates, “presumably this means you don’t know how to write, either. Neither is acceptable. At some point, you will need to read my letters, and issue your own. You’ll need to do paperwork. Can you do arithmetic?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were. I asked if you could do arithmetic.”

“I can work numbers,” Levi mutters. He folds his arms, sinks back in his chair. “This is pointless, you know.”

“I really cannot stress enough how little that is the case, Levi.” He turns the page holding the finished alphabet round. “We’ll start with you name.”

“People have already tried. My – my mother tried. The guy I lived with tried. Furlan tried. I’m no good at it.”

“That’s not true,” Erwin ignores him. “Anyone can learn to write, especially someone already clearly capable.” He taps the page. “Watch.”

“You don’t understand. It won’t _work._ They don’t stay in my head long enough for it to work.” Levi doesn’t even sound angry, just resigned, if not a little frustrated. “I do everything backwards, I always have.”

“I thought you weren’t lazy.”

If looks could kill. “What part of what I just said didn’t make sense, idiot? You got mud in your ears?”

Erwin ignores him. He prints his name, _L E V I,_ in big block capitals, neatly. He passes him the pen. “Just practice,” he says. “Levi. I order you to take the pen.”

Levi snatches it from his hand. He holds it the way a cook would hold a spoon while stirring a stew, palm wrapped around the stem. “Don’t press too – “

The ink splatters across the page and the nib snaps. Erwin doesn’t think Levi meant to drag it so hard across the page – he’s staring at his own handiwork with a look that amounts to horror. “Did I – did I break it?” He asks.

Erwin plucks it from his hand, opens his draw, and pulls out a new one. This time, he takes Levi’s palm, flattens it on the table. “Hold it gently,” he instructs, “it doesn’t matter how you grip it yet, just try any way that’s comfortable. Make sure the tip faces outwards when you write. Drag softly, not hard. If there isn’t enough ink, you can always do it again.”

“How much did that pen cost?” Levi asks, fixated by his mistake. “Is it expensive?”

“No,” Erwin lies. “Try again.”

And he learns the motions fast enough. Even if he doesn’t understand the letters, he picks up the writing well. He flips the ‘L’ of his name, and his scrawl is wobbly, but this time, the pen did not break.

“There,” Erwin says, silently pleased, “that’s your name, Levi.”

“Are you going to get a new pen?” Levi replies. “I’m sorry about the pen. I didn’t mean to break it.”

“Levi,” Erwin tells him patiently, “forget the pen. I’m ordering you to forget it, okay?”

He stares back down at the page, brow slightly furrowed. “I don’t know why that’s my name,” he says, quietly.

“Well, let’s work on that, shall we?”

He teaches him the sounds the letters make, and Levi understands that well enough. “It’s _luh,_ Levi. Imagine the ‘L’ is bending forward. ‘L’ for ‘line’, for ‘leaf’.”

“Luh,” Levi mutters, face screwed with concentration. He practices drawing the ‘L’ over and over on the page until the pen starts to scratch, and then Erwin shows him how to dip the nib into ink. “Luh-ee-vee-eye,” he says, face screwed at the word. “That doesn’t sound right, Captain.”

“No,” Erwin admits, “this is where it gets complicated.”

He shows him how the sounds run together, and explains that this happens with most words. He takes away the practice sheet, places a clean piece of paper in front of him. “Again,” he taps the paper twice with his finger, “no looking this time.”

Levi is meticulously careful about dipping the pen into the ink and dragging off the excess. He puts the nib to the page.

“ _Luh,”_ Erwin prompts, at a whisper. “Like a long line. Like a leaf. Picture the letter bending.”

Levi drags the pen down, and out. The ‘L’ is still backwards and wobbly, but it’s an ‘L’. The ‘E’ is even harder for him to control, the lines veering off in different directions. ‘V’ is simple enough. ‘I’ is the easiest.

“Levi,” he reads. “That says Levi.”

“It does,” Erwin agrees, carefully hiding his smile. “So now you can sign your name.” He watches him draw his thick uncoordinated lines across the page. “You’re not the first soldier to come to us unable to read, you know,” he tells him bluntly. “It’s no great shame. In the more rural areas, there are no schools. Recruits come to us from poverty. Orphans who had no one to teach them.”

“Do you ever get idiots?” Levi mumbles, “Who can’t remember the shape of the letters? Or gets them round the wrong way?”

Erwin frowns. “Show me,” he says, “write your name again.”

Levi does. This time, Erwin corrects him on the shape of the ‘L’ – it should point east,” he tells him. “Hold out your left hand – outstretched, that’s it. You see?” He traces the skin of index finger to his thumb, a ninety-degree angle. “A perfect L, for left. You’ll always know – “

Levi is almost smiling. Erwin is caught short; he’s never seen him move his lips above anything but a neutral smirk in all the months he’s known him, and even those are rare. He’s staring at his hand with amazement. “That’s an ‘L’,” he says, “it’s on my hand, I’ll never forget it.”

“No,” Erwin agrees, “I suppose you won’t. In fact – “

A realisation hits him. He recalls Mike’s complaints over dinner about Levi’s lax form – he holds his blade the wrong way, he said. It’s backwards. The thug thinks he knows better than us.

Erwin stands and moves around the table so he stands at Levi’s back. He leans forward, one hand braced on the desk, the other tapping Levi’s left hand. “Palm up,” he says, gently.

Levi obeys. He has surprisingly long fingers, Erwin notices. Perhaps, if he had grown up somewhere else, he would have been tall. His nails are trimmed back to the quick, blunted, and when Erwin traces them he finds the skin is dry and littered with scars, callouses. Some harsh red burns around the ends of his nails. “This time,” he says, mouth close to Levi’s ear, “try this hand.”

He presses the pen into his palm. Levi smells faintly of – candle wax, he thinks. He smells like his father’s study. He finds himself watching the back of his head instead of his writing; the dark black hairs on the nape of his neck.

“It’s better,” Levi tells him, “it’s easier.”

Erwin blinks, focuses back on the page. Yes, it looks better – the lines are firmer, straighter, almost perfectly neat, in fact. Erwin claps him on the shoulder, clears his throat. “Yes, well – you’re not backwards, Levi. You’re just left-handed. Apologies, we usually screen for this sort of thing in training. You would have been taken for special lessons to adapt to the equipment.”

“Why does it matter what hand we lead with?” Levi asks. “Is it going to be a problem?”

Erwin half-smiles. “I think you’re a unique case, Levi. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Levi is scratching the nib into the paper, drawing swirls and spirals. “Are you going to tell them?” He asks, head down.

“Tell them what?”

“That I can’t read. Write.” He carefully looks at Erwin from under his eyes, sharp – near vicious, in fact.

“I don’t see any reason to so long as you promise to come for lessons. Three times a week. Here, my office.”

“They’ll think we’re fucking,” Levi tells him bluntly. He puts down the pen. “Or is that not something that happens in the Survey Corps?”

Erwin doesn’t let anything show. “They may well think that,” he agrees, “but I won’t be teaching you for free, either. You’re going to devote some extra time to help me.”

Levi watches him. Erwin watches Levi; takes stock of him. The thin eyes, upturned nose, sharp jaw. He thinks – he thinks about what it would look like if Levi stared at him with anything other than simmering resentment, at best. Hate, at worst. And then, suddenly, without noticing why, or how, he pictures what it would look like to slip his thumb between Levi’s lips; smear his drool down his throat.

Erwin clears his throat. “Yes,” he says, “yes, extra time. You can keep my quarters in good shape, for starters. And I need you to put in some time in the yard.”

Is Levi watching him like he knows? What is that, behind his eyes? Perhaps nothing – Erwin is suffering from an overactive imagination. When was the last time he took some time for his own pleasure? There’s a whorehouse not far from here; even if it meant just a few hours bliss…

“The yard, Captain?” Levi presses.

“Training. I need you to show the others how you move like you do. Perhaps some hand-to-hand combat. It’s no use you having the skill you have if we don’t put it to use.” He starts to search under the scribbled sheets for the nice, cream-laden paper. It’s getting late, and he wants his reply to his mother to be out with the courier by morning.

“Hand-to-hand? Will we be punching titans to death, now?” He asks innocently, aggravating.

“Reflexes need to be trained,” Erwin answers, turning back to his papers.

“Seems a raw deal for a skill I don’t want to learn.”

Erwin shoots him a withering look. “Don’t be pathetic, Levi,” he tells him. “You don’t mean that. It may have served you to pretend you were stupid in the underground but I don’t abide by idiots, so if that’s how you truly feel, you should stick to what you know.” He dips his pen in the ink, taps it lightly against the glass rim of the holder. “Now,” he continues patiently, “before you leave, you’re going to finish the floors. And I believe we talked about my boots, too.”

He pauses with his nib hovering above the page. “Were you waiting for something?” He asks him, pointedly.

What is it, Erwin wonders? It must be hate. Levi has every reason to hate him, this is true – some may say he raised him up, others would argue he’s leading him to an early grave. He’s sorry he had to take Levi from a place he understood – where he was strong by sheer strength alone. He thinks it’s probably hard for him to sit here, opposite a man he’s supposed to serve, a man he blames for the death of his friends.

“Nothing,” Levi mutters. He stands. Erwin wonders, does he picture killing him? Does he daydream about slitting his throat with a shiv, or watching him ripped apart by titans? Would Levi feel free, if that were the case? Relieved of Erwin’s burden, perhaps. His bond.

Yes, Erwin thinks, even as he puts down the words to his own mother. Levi probably does dream about putting his hands on his skin and tearing. In fact, he would think less of him if he didn’t. Erwin – he has his own dreams, of course. He pictures Levi’s hand on his body, too.

He props his head up on his arm, dozily, and watches him bend onto the floor, hands and knees, scrubbing at the boot-prints Erwin left. All that talent. All that skill. He feels his fist close. What would it be like, he thinks, to cut through titans like paper? He’d go to the end of the world, if he could. All the way across the sea, if such a sea exists.

He comes to with a jerk, the sound of metal hitting wood; his pen has rolled of off the table and beneath the desk. Sighing, he gets down to his knees to root around and find it – these kinds of things really are expensive, they’re not just a quill, and he probably can’t afford to lose another one…

The carpet beneath his knees is rucked up. Frowning, Erwin wrinkles his nose with distaste; the entire underside of his desk is covered with cobwebs. How long has it been since anyone cleaned down here? “Levi,” he starts to say, “you’ve been sloppy. You’ve forgotten – “

It’s only by chance he looks up. Above his head, beneath the large slab of the table, is a knife. It’s pasted in place with candle wax – ingenious, you’d never notice it was gone – and hidden in the only place in his office Erwin has not touched. Which Levi knows of course – he would have seen the cobwebs and the dust, and would have planted the first knife right in the place he knew Erwin would find it, get him to let his guard down. He hears himself sigh, heavily. He prises it free, shuffles back out into the office.

The look Levi gives him is withering. “You got lucky,” he says.

It’s a good knife. Far better than the makeshift fake he’d stored earlier. Leather handle, sharp, clean blade – oh yes. This would be Levi’s knife. He can imagine he worked hard for this one. Maybe, even, it was stolen; you don’t get blades like this underground, not unless you’ve got very wealthy backers.

“This is a pretty knife,” Erwin says, running his thumb across the flat edge. “A very pretty knife. Very dangerous, Levi, well done.” He opens his drawer and place it inside. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I keep it.”


	2. Chapter 2

He watches him as he watches Levi. The Captain, up on his horse, riding back to camp from who knows where. He seems to do a lot of boot-licking. Just another reason to hate him, as if the earnest lecturing and sociopathic inclinations weren’t enough.

Levi has been putting in time at the yard. The Captain’s words, not his; Levi is not a good teacher. He doesn’t believe there’s anything you can teach you’re not better off learning naturally. That’s how Kenny taught him, and he turned out okay. Better than okay – the best fighter there is. Levi always knew he was better than people underground but truth is, that’s not hard. He didn’t expect that so many of surface-dwellers would be shit, too.

“You’re not thinking,” Levi tells the girl – a new recruit, but a real one, not like Levi, who was roped in at the last minute. “ _Think_ before you act. Watch him – what’s he doing? How is he standing? Does he seem clever? If he looks clever, then you figure he’ll try to bluff you. Double-bluff him.”

The girl – Nanaba, he remembers – frowns. “But Levi, how do you tell if someone _looks_ clever?”

Levi doesn’t know, is the answer. He can feel himself getting frustrated. “Just – guess,” he lies, and moves on.

The Captain is approaching, flanked by his guard-dog, the tall one with the nose. A freak if Levi ever saw one; he doesn’t forget the way the way he held him in mud when Erwin found him, and he doesn’t want to remember the way he’d sized him up the first conversation they had, sniffing him like a dog.

“Well?” The Captain asks, reaching the group, “What’s the matter? I thought Levi was putting you all through your paces?”

A few mumbles. “He’s not a good teacher,” someone inputs.

“Oh?” The Captain raises his brows at him. “And here I thought he promised me he’d put some time in the yard to make sure you all picked up some moves. Levi, what’s the problem?”

Levi folds his arms, shrugs. “I told you,” he says, “it’s not something that can be taught.”

“Feeling boastful, are we?” The Captain asks him.

That irritates him. Levi is not prideful. He says what he says because it’s the truth – he can’t explain why he is the way he is, just that this is how he’s always been. “I’m not boasting,” he says, “I’m telling the truth.”

The Captain unclips his cloak, drapes it on the ground. “You feel like these soldiers can’t be trained, is that what you’re saying? That they’re not strong enough?”

“Are you deaf?” Levi questions, half-innocent, mocking. “They could be the best soldiers in the history of humanity and it wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t know,” he repeats slowly, as if speaking to a child, “how I do what I do. Understand?”

The Captain cracks his knuckles. “I see,” he says, sternly. “Then you will teach me. And even if what you claim is true – I will watch how you fight, and I will teach them. Understand?”

Levi shakes his head. “This won’t end well for you, Captain. You don’t want me to embarrass you in front of your men,” he says, and hears the others whisper behind their palms. Drawing bets, maybe – fuck it, Levi would, if their positions were reversed.

“I ranked top of my cadet class,” Erwin says, like that means anything. “I’m not a bad fighter, Levi.” He braces feet, raises his fists in front of his face, goading. “Don’t worry,” he reassures him, and some of the gathered soldiers laugh, like this is funny, “I’ll go easy on you.”

Levi does not curl his fingers into fists or even shift his weight on his feet. He stands there, as if unbothered. “You’re too large,” he tells him, bluntly. “Even if you could learn what I do, it wouldn’t work.”

“It sounds to me like you’re making excuses, Levi,” the Captain wheedles. His eyes are laughing. Levi wants nothing more than to drive his fist through his face. “Besides,” he adds, casually, “it won’t be the first time I’ve beaten you, will it?”

Levi stays calm. He thinks without thinking:

The Captain is a strategist. He is provoking Levi to act. He thinks if Levi acts without thinking, his attacks will be sloppy. But not too sloppy – he will anticipate Levi to bluff. So, Levi must double-bluff. Go for his face with right fist, come up with an uppercut that the Captain will block. The Captain will then press the advantage he thinks he has; how? Use his size against Levi, try and throw him off balance. His arms will still be blocking him, so that means he’ll go for a kick – Levi will block it, and go for the second bluff, a fist to the Captain’s stomach. He’ll use everything to protect it, that’s instinct, and Levi will have him on edge. Then a fist to the side of the head while he’s distracted; then another; then another.

Levi charges. The Captain blocks his first attack, tries to counter by driving his knee into Levi’s ribs. Levi dodges; aims a fist to the Captain’s stomach, which he crosses two arms to deflect, and then slams his fist into the Captain’s cheekbone, close enough to his eye that it’ll bruise.

The Captain seems to hang, suspended in air; Levi sees it all so clearly, the drops of blood the fly from his face, his grimace of pain, the sting of his knuckles. The gasps from the soldiers. Everything slowed, perfect clarity.

And then he comes back to himself. One of them – glasses, Levi calls them, because he hasn’t cared to learn their name – is crowing over the Captain. “Do you need a bandage?” They're laughing, “He got you pretty good, Erwin.”

The Captain twists out of their grip, points at him. “How did you do it?” He asks. “Quick. Tell me what you feel. How did you know how to do this?”

“Do you want me to do it again?” Levi grits, curling his hands into fists, “Was the first time not enough?”

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” The Captain barks at him. “Tell me how you knew how to hit me.”

“I don’t _know,”_ Levi snaps, throwing a punch which the Captain catches in his fist, grinds him back, “are you some kind of masochist?”

Glasses tries to step between them. “Now, boys,” they say, with that gormless smile, “let’s not lose our tempers. Levi, I’m sure the Captain just wants to get the best out of you – “

“Stay out of it, Hange,” the Captain orders, pushing them away. “You,” he says to Levi, “need to think about what you’re doing. The moves you’re making. No one can see the future – you must be analysing my decisions based on _something.”_

“Ever occurred to you you’re just stupid?” Levi snarls up at him, the Captain looming down at him. He slams his hands on his chest, as if to push him back.

The Captain frowns. “What you did was – it wasn’t right,” he said, “you fought dirty, it wasn’t fair.”

Levi stares at him scathingly. “There’s no such thing as a fair fight, Captain. Any idiot off the street knows that.”

The Captain’s lips twist unpleasantly. “I’m sorry to do this to you, Levi,” he says, and before Levi can think, he’s sweeping his legs out from under him.

Or, he tries to: Levi doesn’t think. Doesn’t the Captain understand? This is like breathing to him. He can’t even see himself move, or remember the steps and patterns and blows it takes, but he gets the Captain beneath him, his fists pummelling his face once, twice. “Don’t you understand?” He’s telling him, “It’s not taught, Captain, it’s me. It’s just who I am.”

His fists are bloody. “Enough!” Someone says, tackling Levi from behind, the two of them rolling on the grass. It’s Mike, Levi realises. “Are you trying to kill him?!” He demands, shaking Levi’s shoulders, “Are you out of your mind?!”

“Leave him, Mike,” the Captain says, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” There’s a thick glob of blood dripping from his nose. _Good,_ Levi thinks, viciously. He pushes Mike off of him and stands, turns his back on them all – the Captain who goads him, and the soldiers who laughed.

“Hey!” Mike screams after him, “Where are you going?! Get back here – “

“Leave him,” he hears the Captain mutter, “I’ll deal with him.”

He won’t. Levi will not let him. He realises, this is no place for him. How did he ever let himself think it was? This is what happens when you have no one, he thinks, sickeningly. What was he trying to do, replace them? Hoping he would see Isabel’s face in one of the new recruits that come rolling through, or worse, that someone could – that there would be some other Furlan. Roots. The Captain who teaches him to read and write and silently mocks him for it the whole time – they all do, probably. Levi’s a rat. His best bet is to get far away from here, as a far as you can get in the wall. He has his first month’s wages and he can steal a horse, by the time he’s in the mountains they’ll never find him --

 _The knife,_ he remembers. _He still has your knife._

Levi packs his money and some of the few civilian clothes he owns. He saddles a horse round the back of the stable – these people don’t believe in even naming their horses, they die so easily. It makes him sick. People can choose to waste their life on mindless dreams if they want, but don’t drag the innocent animals into it.

The Captain’s office is on the second floor facing the quad. It’s not hard to climb his way up to the window and roll through. The stupid man doesn’t even lock his desk – does he trust in his comrades so damn much? Levi can’t leave without his knife. He can’t. It was a gift. Gripping its handle, he sighs. It feels good in his palm, balanced. _I’m sorry,_ he thinks. _I’m so sorry._

But then, the Captain stands in the door.

His left eye is swelling, deep black bruises under his lashes. Even better, those slanting fucking cheekbones are grazed red by Levi’s fists, his perfect, strong nose taped up and purpling. He wishes he could have knocked it clear from his face, smashed it to a pulp along with the rest of him. The itchy anger is twitching in him now, half adrenalin, half panic.

The Captain halts. He closes the door.

“I’m very sorry, Captain Smith,” Levi sneers, “but I think my time with the Corps is at its end.”

“Is that so.” Levi watches the Captain’s good eye track him, to his hands, to the knife. “I see you’ve been stealing again,” he says calmly. “I suppose old habits die hard.”

“I wasn’t a _thief,”_ Levi hisses, holding the knife parallel to his chest, “I was never a fucking _thief,_ I didn’t steal anything from anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

The Captain shrugs. “Well we all need to tell ourselves lies, don’t we Levi?” He unclips his cloak and hangs it up on the hook by the door. “Once a rat, always a rat.”

Levi decides not to let it bother him – he doesn’t even twitch. If Erwin wants to goad him again, he can goad all he likes, it won’t change a thing. Levi has money, he has a horse, and now he has his knife.

“Would you like some tea?” The Captain asks him.

Levi will not let him distract him. He kicks the drawer shut with his thigh, edges backwards to the window. “Enough,” he snarls, “enough with the pathetic games.”

“Games?” The Captain shrugs, moves towards the fireplace, “I just asked if you wanted – “

“Stay back!” Levi snarls, “Any closer and I throw this knife at your throat.”

The Captain pauses, half-crouched. “Levi, we both know that’s not true,” he says, “because then you would lose the knife. And you don’t want to do that, do you?”

“I don’t give a shit about the knife,” he lies, “I just don’t like people laying their dirty fingers on my property.”

“Neither do I,” Erwin agrees. “But I seem to remember you putting that knife in _my_ office. Why would you have done that if you didn’t mean for me to have it?”

Levi’s going to do it. He’s going to shove this down his throat. “You can’t just _take,”_ he spits, “you can’t just _take_ something and claim it as yours – “

“Why not?” Erwin questions, “I did it with you, didn’t I?”

Levi thinks he might be screaming. He lunges with deadly intent – he’ll stab him in the eye, no, in the chest, no, he’ll – he’ll scalp him and leave his head to burn in the fireplace, he’ll draw him a new, goading smile, he’ll cut off his nose and his ears, he’ll stab and stab and stab until –

Erwin’s leg kicks him off balance. He collapses onto the floor with a heavy crash, cracks his chin on the raised stone of the fireplace, mouth filling with blood. _Sloppy,_ he hears Kenny tsking, _you’re gonna get gutted and thrown in the sewage if you keep letting your anger block your vision, brat._

Levi roars, scrambling to his hands and knees, but – he’s dropped the knife. He sees it sitting innocently on the carpet, reaches to grab hold of it, and meets the sole of Erwin’s boot, flat in his face, crunching him off balance.

He spits blood. _I’ll kill you with my bare hands,_ he thinks, viciously, frantically, _I’ll finish what I started._ He lunges again, focusing on getting his hands around Erwin’s throat, of tearing his hair from his head, ripping off his skin –

The Captain pushes back with the full-weight of his body, all six-foot-two of him. All Levi wanted to do is wrap his hands around his neck and feel the life leave him – he just wanted to see some fucking _helplessness_ in those cold blue eyes, anything other than amusement or disdain. But the Captain flattens him into the ground instead, one knee on each of his thighs, two broad hands around each of his wrists.

“Shh,” The Captain is saying, “shh, shh, shh. Calm yourself, Levi. Can you calm yourself?”

His mouth tastes of iron, thick of it. He picks up his head and spits onto The Captain’s face. But he doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t even _blink,_ flecks of Levi blood speckling above his brow, dripping into his lashes.

He arches his back, twists like a feral cat, desperately trying to outmanoeuvre the Captain in what has become a simple show of strength: he’s let the Captain get on top him and pin him down. Unless Levi thinks fast, he’s not going to brute-strength his way out of it. He glares, feels his upper lip twitch; his chest rising and falling, every muscle pulled tight as a bowstring.

“That’s it,” the Captain soothes, “accept it, Levi. You’re not thinking rationally. That was nowhere near what I know you’re capable of.”

“You goaded me,” Levi spits. “You made me act like that.”

“Yes,” the Captain agrees. His thumbs are rubbing little circles into the skin of Levi’s wrists, as if he thinks that will be soothing, as if Levi is a child. “Shh,” he says again, “I’m not moving anywhere. You’re here until I decide to let you be otherwise, understand?”

Levi shuts his eyes. He lets his breathing even and slow. He thinks about where the knife might be, the ache in his jaw. He opens his eyes to stare into the Captain’s, all blue and calm and focused. It makes him sick. He twists his head, and _bites._

The Captain’s arm tenses; Levi sinks his teeth there, the soft skin, the hard muscle. He expects the Captain to jerk, free his arm; he’ll wrap around, beat his throat, free himself. He’ll take the knife. He’ll flee. This is what is supposed to happen: instead, the Captain does not move, not an inch, not in pain, not to free himself. He stays there, stone, bracketing Levi’s limbs, and even though some sweat drips off his nose and onto Levi’s face, he does not move.

“Are you done?” The Captain asks him, voice tight with pain, “Or should I call a kennel-master to let him know we have a mangy dog?”

Levi releases him, spits blood and flecks of arm-hair from his mouth. He wonders if the Captain will have him thrown in gaol, or worse – Levi can think of worse. “It’s my knife,” he rasps, throat filled with his own blood.

The Captain’s brow furrows, as if with concern. “Don’t be so childish,” he chides, disgusted.

Levi reaches for the knife, just past his vision; the Captain backhands him, _hard,_ so hard that his eyesight clouds briefly, head thwacking against the floorboards. The Captain’s weight shifts. He’s… he’s straddling his waist, or… Levi shuts his eyes, groans. He hears: rustling, leather, clinking metal. He’s swallowed so much blood he wants to throw up. The Captain has bound his hands above his head with his belt.

“Again,” the Captain orders, needing only one hand to keep Levi’s arms pinned to the floor. “I asked you, are you done?”

The Captain is doubling in his vision. “You didn’t beat me,” he mutters, “would never beat me in a fair fight…”

“Shut up. There are no fair fights, or did you forget?”

“You going to kill me, Captain?” Levi wheezes, coughing blood.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re too valuable to kill.”

“Hah,” Levi weakly scoffs, “sure I am. I know what this is about.”

“I’m not sure you do. I’m not sure you’ve ever understood, Levi.”

Levi cracks open one eye, stares up at him. Poor bastard, he thinks. Levi is many things, but he’s not a liar – not to himself. He picks up his head with the last of his strength, presses his nose to the Captain’s cheek, his lips to his lips, his teeth to his tongue. He draws blood – or maybe it’s just his own he’s tasting. The Captain does not push him away. At least, not immediately.

He grips Levi’s chin, the sore place he hit earlier, swallows his little cry of pain and drags him off his skin. He swipes his thumb against his swollen bottom lip, stares at the red smear left there. “Who’s playing games now, hmm?” He says, brows raised.

He releases him. Levi falls back onto the floor with a soft groan. “People like you,” he mutters, “only want one thing.”

The Captain scoffs. “You think that’s what I want?” He says, derisively. “That I’m as common as a man as that?”

“I’m a thing to you, Captain. A – a – “ Levi searches his mouth for the right word, “an _anomaly.”_

“Ah,” The Captain says, releasing his wrists and sitting up, his full weight pressed onto Levi’s hips, “so you have been studying, then.”

The air in Levi’s lungs exhales in a short rush, the arc of his spine lengthening to pull him away from the Captain’s weight. His fingers scratch futilely in the floorboards above his head.

The Captain starts again. “Let me make myself clear,” he says.

His thighs bracket Levi’s hips. It feels hot, between them – too warm, a tightness where their bodies meet.

The Captain rearranges himself, sits – no. Grinds back into the gap between Levi’s thighs. Levi grits his teeth, exhales shortly. Another person; maybe, they would call it a gasp.

“You seem to have misread my intentions, Levi,” The Captain tells him earnestly, “well, that’s okay. Few people do understand them.” He slides his hands – palms flat, fingers spread – up Levi’s stomach, his chest, like he owns him, like it’s his right to take it, and Levi lets him. “You,” The Captain says, with reverence in his voice, “don’t even realise what you are.”

He snicks the button at the top of Levi’s shirt. It exposes just a slice of collarbone, but the Captain takes that hungrily, too; traces his fingers along the sharp dip, up along his throat. Does Levi accommodate him by twisting his head to the side, or is he flinching away? He doesn’t know.

“I believe you think you’re just a good fighter,” Erwin continues, stroking his fingers down Levi’s chest. He plucks at the second button. “Or you think you’re a particularly good criminal.” He laughs, humourlessly. “Well let me tell you, Levi – you’re a terrible criminal, even I know that. _Real_ thugs don’t distribute food to the poor, or take in strays, or take on risky jobs so that a friend can receive medical care. You were always going to be a bad criminal. You can’t even steal a knife.”

“Not stealing,” Levi snaps. “If it’s already my – “

Erwin frowns at him, slams the underside of his hand into Levi’s chin; his teeth clip harshly, the pain grooving through his jaw. “Shut up,” Erwin orders, “or I’ll gag you. Do you understand?”

His hand moves down to his throat, squeezes once, warningly; Levi swallows.

“Good,” he resumes, “better. The truth, Levi,” he undoes his third button, his fourth, “is that I would kill to have what you have. Before you saw Them – the titans. How could you have known?” He mutters, “I suppose you would have thought your petty thuggery was enough, the limits of your ability.”

He peels back the edges of Levi’s shirt, exposes his chest fully. Inhales deeply. He’s got each hand cupping the sides of his rib, his thumb sweeping along his breast, and he _can –_ Levi could imagine him wrapping those hands around his waist and his fingers meeting each other on each side.

“How could you know?” The Captain mumbles again, “The first time I saw… I was fifteen. I lost my friends. We spent years training together, eating together, sleeping together. We joined the Survey Corps because we wanted to be heroes. That very first time we left the walls – they died and I didn’t. Why? Not _skill_ – luck, Levi. Dumb luck. Brute luck.”

The Captain dips down, presses his mouth to Levi’s stomach, the centre of his ribs, his sternum. “No,” he continues, with a hunger, “I was just at mercy to Luck’s whims, but _you –_ “ he raises his head, stares at him with his one, unbruised eye, “ – have never had any luck in your life. And look at what you can do.”

Levi would say: we all have luck. I was lucky Kenny found me before I starved to death next to my mother’s corpse. I was lucky to find Furlan. I was lucky to steal ODM gear. Perhaps, even, I was lucky to cross paths with you – he hasn’t decided yet.

But he doesn’t say that, because The Captain has taken his mouth for his own, too. The kiss is crushing, bruising; Levi picks up his arms, wrists strapped together tight, to loop around the back of the Captain’s head. He can break his neck. He could. Or he could –

Using his leverage to pull himself up, chasing the Captain’s touch. He wants to make him hurt – he wants this to hurt him. All he can taste is blood – beneath that? Maybe the tea the Captain had with his lunch, with whatever nobleman he was wooing, a hint of sugar on the inside of his gums. It makes him feel sick. He wants to devour him.

“Are you satisfied?” Levi whispers at him, pink-tinged drool frothing between their lips, “Now that you’ve drawn me into your hell?”

Erwin’s eyes stares at him, fingers laced through his hair. “With you,” he breathes, “I’ll never be satisfied.”

 _Not until he’s taken every part of me,_ Levi thinks, listlessly. The Captain is pulling out his cock. He’s kneeling up and putting Levi on the floor, holding himself in hand. “For your insubordination,” he tells him, and Levi laughs. Not a real laugh, of course – Erwin is not Furlan, or Isabel. He’ll never hear him that way.

“Do you like it?” Levi crows, staring up at him, “Does being called a murderer make your cock hard, Captain?”

He wants Erwin to backhand him again, to reignite the anger, to pour water over the tense warmth between his thighs. Instead, he cards his fingers through his hair, _gently._ “Do you know how to do it?” He asks, courteously.

Levi braces his bound hands between Erwin’s thighs, thick as tree trunks. He feels the length of him against his cheek, head buried in the gap between cock and hip. He looks up at him from his eyes. _What do you think?_ He tells him, without speaking. He takes him in one.

The Captain sighs. He keeps his hand pressed to the back of Levi’s head, controlling him, or more likely, steadying himself. He fucks forward, the tip of him choking. His shirt is rucked up around his hips, his knees bruising on the wood, hands bound at the base of his spine. He holds him, as long as he can, before he pulls off with a wet cough, eyes watering.

“I didn’t say stop,” The Captain tells him. He fucks into him again.

This time, a steady rhythm. He lets the Captain use his mouth – _lets_ him. If this is as close as he’ll get, so be it; next time – because Levi doesn’t doubt there will be a next time – he’ll be able to scratch his nails across the Captain’s shoulders, put his teeth to his throat, watch his face move from nothing to rapture to pain and back again. This time, he lets the Captain do what he needs to do: fuck his face, while Levi chokes on it.

“Can you swallow?” The Captain asks him. There’s no declaration of love, no kind words. They’re soldiers, supposedly; this is how they do this. He feels out Levi’s throat with his hand, as if testing to see how deep he can go and Levi feels his gorge rising, the tell-tale prickling in his eyes.

“Apparently not,” the Captain groans, pulling out before Levi embarrasses himself worse than he already has. “Kiss it,” he orders, and shakes Levi’s head with a hand in his hair. “Do it.”

He presses his mouth to the base of the Captain’s cock. The Captain uses his hand. When he comes, he does it silently, his break quickening, legs tensing around Levi’s back. One hand in his hair, to sweep his sweaty bangs back from his flushed brow. He paints Levi’s face with his come, grips his throat, and kisses him for the final time. Levi shuts his eyes, his cock heavy between his legs; it’s messy, his aim is off, he lets the Captain control the kiss.

After: “Open your mouth,” Erwin orders.

Levi does.

He spits. Come, blood, saliva. Levi swallows, licks iron-and-salt from his lips.

“There,” Erwin tells him, shortly. “You’re mine, now, understand? So enough with the theatrics.”

“Theatrics?” Levi snarls, but his bite has been sanded down, dulled by the taste of the Captain in his throat and the weight between his thighs. He flexes his wrists in the Captain’s belt. “You haven’t finished yet,” he tells him.

“Haven’t I?” The Captain snakes his hand round to grip Levi’s ass, pulls him close to his chest, Levi’s knees bracketing his hips. “I’m sorry,” he says, gently cupping Levi’s chin, thumbing his bottom lip, “did I not explain how this works?”

Levi catches his thumb between his teeth. He watches the Captain’s pupils expand.

“I see,” he says, and does not move his fingers from Levi’s chin. Instead, he takes his free palm and presses it to Levi’s clothed cock; he doesn’t drag, or work him, but it’s a different kind of tease. Levi’s sucks on the tip of his thumb to reward his initiative, rolls his hips against his palm.

“Lie down,” the Captain orders. “On my lap.”

Levi wants more, but he’ll take this, too. He wants to feel the Captain’s body with his own – he’s done with clinical, impersonal. If the Erwin Smith wants to own him, then Levi should get his worth, too. With his hips in the Captain’s lap, he’s angled at a slight slant, his head knocking against the rug by the couch, his back arched.

“Put your hands above your head,” the Captain demands. “Be quiet.”

That’s not hard. Levi is always quiet. He pulls his arms above his head and doesn’t think about how bare this makes him – it’s worse than nakedness, it’s allowing the Captain to hurt him any way he wanted to, if he wanted to. No matter what Levi thinks, it will take his body longer to trust him, for his muscles to learn. But maybe, that adds to the thrill.

The Captain peels him out of his pants, uses the flat of his palm to press his cock back against his belly, watches how Levi ripples into it, arching himself into that warm, heavy touch. But the Captain takes back his hand. “Don’t move,” he says. “If you so much as twitch, I stop.”

Levi exhales through his nose, lets his eyes shut. He wants to say, _get on with it, then,_ but he thinks the Captain will be true to his word. He hears him spit in his palm. He braces his arm around Levi’s lower stomach, to pin him down, stop his spasms, control him. And he wraps his fingers around Levi’s cock and fucks him with his fist.

It’s good, is the truth. Levi won’t lie to himself. He hasn’t had this – another person’s touch – since before the expedition. He’s seen how the Captain looks at him even if the Captain doesn’t realise it himself. Levi’s had many people look at him that way, sometimes friendly, mostly not. This feels like – stretching a muscle that hasn’t been used in a long time. It’s hard to resist the urge to stretch his spine, cover his mouth with his forearms to stop himself from sighing too loudly. He hopes the Captain can’t see the tips of his boots bending as he curls his toes.

The Captain works him steadily, a good rhythm with a firm grip. The absurdity of the situation is not lost on him; in fact, it’s what tips him over the edge, the sheer stupidity of himself, spread out on the Captain’s floor, with his come drying on his chin, and his pants around his ankles. The Captain says nothing when he comes; just catches it in his palm, without fucking him through the aftershocks. It makes the whole thing a bit unsatisfying, if Levi’s being honest, but then that’s probably what he intended.

“Good,” the Captain – Erwin – says, shortly. He sounds slightly breathless although Levi can’t imagine why. He wraps his filthy hand around Levi’s throat and urges him to sit, tugs at the leather belt wrapped around his arms.

Levi rolls himself off of his lap and doesn’t think anything at all. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, probes his gums with his tongue. The Captain is already standing. He’s holding Levi’s knife.

“Next time,” he says, opening the drawer in his desk, and putting it in, “we’ll work on manners.”


	3. Chapter 3

Erwin doesn’t make a habit of licentious behaviour. Smoking, drinking, sex; they tend to be distractions at best, harmful at worst. He remembers the village drunk, a man with thick greasy hair who used to chase young girls down alleys, and he remembers his uncle, who spent half his weekly wage from the farm on cigarettes from the Interior and died at forty of a choking cough that wouldn’t quit. Sex? Well, he’s not a woman, but sex has other problems. You lay down with someone too often – things get blurred. You start thinking of them more than you should, maybe. The smell of their skin, the feel of their hair, the things they can do for you. Worse: what you can do for them. That’s when things start to get especially –

Distracting.

“Erwin,” Mike prompts. “It was your go.”

“Mmm?” He takes a lazy drag on the cigarette, frowns at his cards. “Right.” He stares at his deck: the aim is to get rid of your cards, cheating is allowed if you don’t get caught. “Two aces,” he lies, putting down a jack and an ace.

“Cheat,” Hange interrupts. “Obviously – that was a weak play, are you even paying attention?”

“Not particularly,” Erwin admits, and regrets admitting it. He takes a sip of his scotch, a cheap thing he picked up in Mitras last time he went begging with the commander. He could afford better but wasting money on alcohol has never been his style. “I’m thinking about the new recruit. Levi.”

He sees Mike and Hange share a look over their cards and pretends not to notice. So they’ve discussed it. Or him. “He’s an interesting guy,” Hange says, generously.

“He’s a feral,” Mike adds. “That time, in the training yard? He would have beat you to a pulp if we’d let him.”

Erwin feels his lips press together. “Maybe,” he agrees, “I was asking for it, don’t you think?”

Mike looks him, half-puzzled. Erwin gets the sense that he doesn’t understand why Erwin does the things he does – that’s okay. It’s probably better that way. “Why would you do that if you know he’s a lunatic?” He asks, honestly. “What do you see in him?”

Erwin shrugs a shoulder. “Ask Hange,” he says casually, taking another drag. He balances the cigarette between his lips, lays his cards flat on the table. “Are we still playing?” He asks around it.

Hange looks guilty. They always look guilty, though, like you’ve got them in a secret. “He’s pretty astounding, Mike, even you have to admit.” A beat; “Unless, of course, you’re jealous…”

Mike’s shoulders tighten. “I’m not jealous,” he snaps, throwing down his cards, “it’s not about skill. The kid can be as skilled as he wants, it doesn’t mean anything if he can’t direct it in the right way.”

Erwin thinks about the past few weeks and all the ways he’s had Levi direct his skill his way. He clears his throat, tries to push the thoughts from his head, but he’s all cloudy with the drink. “He’s not a kid, by the way. He’s at least twenty-something. Just got a – young face.”

“And a young frame, huh?” Mike adds snidely. “He’s built like fresh meat.”

Well, that’s not true – Erwin has seen every inch of Levi, head to toe, and knows he has the body of a man. More than that – a hardened one, all lean muscle and scars and callouses. “I think that works in his advantage though,” Hange says, because they’ve clearly thought about it. “Low centre of gravity – no one else can do what he does because they don’t have the build. The males are too tall, the females not as strong…”

Mike looks at them incredulously. “We’re really all just experiments to you, huh?”

“It’s just an _observation,_ ” they mutter. “Obviously there are exceptions.”

Erwin rubs at his nose with his thumb, sniffs. “Yeah,” he agrees, “yeah, that must have something to do with it. Not all of it but – some of it.” He frowns. “Maybe there’s something to it – you think we should start a recruitment drive for smaller males?”

Hange shrugs. “I think it’s better to keep a mix. Let the girls be quicker on the feet, the boys come in with heavy hitters. No need to complicate it – ODM is pretty much the only thing we do consistently well. Besides,” they add, pointedly, “I don’t think what little-Levi has is something that can be taught, or grown, that much is clear.”

“Yes it is,” Erwin agrees, appreciatively. Hange has a sharper view of these things than most; they seem to understand, instinctively, why Levi is such a unique case.

“Well I’m glad you two agree,” Mike says, downing the rest of his drink with a bitter face, “but I maintain he’s a flight-risk. Worse than that – he’s going to get someone killed. Doesn’t listen to orders. Even if he did… he wants you dead, Erwin, you realise that don’t you?”

Erwin is thinking about the line of Levi’s brows and how they bend upwards when he wants to come. Only his extremities blush; the tips of his ears, his nose, his –

“What?” Erwin frowns, lost in thought.

“He’s going to kill you,” Mike enunciates. “He wants you dead.”

“No, no,” Erwin disagrees, shaking his head. He drags and exhales smoke. “I think we’re past that now,” he tells them, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. “He’s had plenty of chances.”

Mike looks exasperated. Hange looks unbothered. “Well he’s got a point,” they point out. “How many months has it been now? It’s not like the guy lacks skill, if he _really_ wanted Erwin dead…”

 _He would have killed me while he had me on my back,_ Erwin thinks mildly. Or while my head was between his thighs, while I sleep, while I finish with my eyes shut, etc. Besides, their weekly meetings are not a secret, even if as far as the others are concerned, Levi is just dusting his books.

“I don’t think you understand,” Mike presses, the booze making him bold, “kid’s not going to forgive you, not ever. Doesn’t matter if he’s complacent now – fuck it, I would be, if you gave me a warm bed, fed me three meals a day for the first time in my life, and paid me a wage to do something I find easy. As far as he’s concerned, you killed his friends, Erwin. He’ll never forget. You shouldn’t, either.”

His friends. Yes. The sweet red-head, the tall, handsome man. Both had had potential. “I liked Isabel,” Hange says, softly. “She liked the horses.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, “she did. And Furlan wasn’t a bad guy, either. Both dead, now. And that _rat_ is the one that survived.” He drives his finger into the table-top. “Don’t you forget it,” he presses, “it’s people like him that _always_ survive, somehow. Mark my fucking words, the pair of you. Scum rises.”

“Why is he scum?” Erwin asks, quietly. He starts collecting the cards into the palms of his hands.

“Why?” Mike seems taken aback. “Because – he’s a criminal. You’ve heard his rapsheet, guy’s a murderer.”

Erwin snorts, lightly, and without humor. “What, a couple of pimps, thugs, and the son of a minor lord? Sounded like he didn’t have any business scuttling about the underground anyway. What’s a noble like that doing down there?”

“Doesn’t mean they deserved to die,” Mike tells him, stoutly.

“No,” Erwin agrees, shuffling the cards deftly between two hands, “doesn’t mean they didn’t, either. It’s a weird rapsheet, don’t you think? An indiscriminate killer kills… indiscriminately.” He raises his brows. “They don’t target wrong-doers, steal their money, and redistribute it to people who need medical care.”

“Oh, you think he’s a hero?” Mike scoffs.

“None of us are heroes. But he’s not an animal. And we can’t help where we’re born,” Erwin says pointedly, and Mike has the humanity to look ashamed. He comes from a small village in the mountains – hick country, mostly hunters that live off the land. People had mocked him too, once. Made fun of his accent, his clothes, his remarkable gift of being able to sniff out lies. Among other things.

“Anyway,” Erwin continues. He places the deck flat, neatly, on the table. “It concerns me that he’s not making friends. Trust in comrades is the foundation of what we do. If he can’t do it – then you might have a point, Mike.”

“How do you make someone like him trust people like us? He used to kill us for sport,” Mike mutters.

“That’s a rumor,” Hange interjects, “we actually we don’t know that. I heard he exclusively killed military police – “

“No, that’s the serial killer, idiot,” Mike talks over them. “You’re getting him confused with Kenny the Ripper – “

Hange rolls their eyes. “Kenny isn’t real, thicko. That’s a story they tell incoming recruits to scare them out of joining the MPs, it’s just hazing – “

“I think,” Erwin interrupts, “we could start by making more of an effort, don’t you agree, Mike? And maybe not poking at him like an experiment, Hange.”

“He’s not a child. We don’t need to take him under our wing,” Mike says.

Erwin sighs. “No,” he agrees, “but if you’re more patient, he won’t be as – irritable.” Levi had in fact used some choice words to describe Mike at their last meeting – Erwin won’t think to repeat them, but despite his lack of formal education, the man really does have a unique grasp of language. “It’s not an order,” he continues, “just think of it as a favour. To me.”

He stands to show them he considers the matter closed. “Thanks for the cigarettes,” he tells Hange, “you can keep the rest of the scotch.”

He thinks maybe the drink has gone to his head more than he thought it would. His legs feel disjointed as he walks across the quad, stuffing his hands in his pockets. It’s a cold night, the first of many that prove they’re tipping into winter. Another year, then. He squints at the darkness; there’s a lamp burning somewhere near the west building – near the stables. Erwin curses under his breath. People should know better than to light flames near hay, and more than that, to bother the horses at night.

“You there,” he calls, coat wrapped around his shoulders, “it’s not clever to leave a burning lamp around hay, you know. You’re going to get yourself killed and take the animals with you – Levi,” he frowns.

Levi grants him only a short, uninterested look over his shoulder. He’s stroking the nose of a bay mare, the same one he’d ridden out on his first expedition a few months ago. “I’m sorry,” he says, unapologetically, “I didn’t realise visiting the stables wasn’t allowed after dark.”

Erwin frowns. “Well – it’s not banned, really. You should just be careful with the lamps. It’s easy to make mistakes.”

“For other people, maybe,” Levi says. He’s not boasting: he means it. He continues to stroke the horse’s nose, quietly.

“I thought the stable would be too dirty for you,” Erwin ventures.

Levi looks at him, irritated. “They’re horses. They don’t know any better.” He turns back to the animal. “What’s your excuse?” He mutters under his breath.

“Aren’t you cold?” Erwin tries. Levi is only wearing his boots, haphazardly laced, thin sleep pants, and a dark shirt.

“No,” Levi says, and does not offer explanation.

Erwin clears his throat. “Would you,” he tries, “like to come to bed?”

Levi raises a brow at him with that patented, bored disgust, as if Erwin asking so plainly for something they have been doing wordlessly for weeks is distasteful. “You’ve been drinking,” he says.

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t like people who drink,” he replies.

Erwin rubs at his brow with his thumb. “Well alright then,” he says, dozily. “I don’t suppose you’ve considered maybe – making some friends, have you? Other than the horses, I mean.”

Levi doesn’t really seem to react except to stroke the horse’s mane instead. “I don’t have anything to say,” he tells Erwin, quietly.

“You have plenty to say,” Erwin scoffs, “you – you have a lot to say, to me. When… you’re angry with me,” he frowns. “Maybe not so much – at other times. But I bet you could if you tried.”

The look Levi gives him is withering. “We don’t have anything in common. I didn’t go through training, so my bunkmates think I’m a cheat. The recruits are scared of me. Even if they liked me, it wouldn’t matter: I don’t have anything to say.”

“People aren’t complicated, Levi. Just ask them about their homes, their families, the sweetheart they have in town they pretend no one has noticed them sneak out to visit – “

“And when they die?” Levi asks him. “Next time, or the time after that. Should I pull the same routine with the willing idiot that takes their place?”

“Yes,” Erwin tells him, bluntly. “That’s what humans do. We’re social animals.”

Levi’s nose wrinkles. “We’re not animals,” he mutters.

“We are, actually.” Erwin steps forward. “Have you heard about evolution?”

“Ach, Erwin,” Levi starts, and it’s the first raise in the inflection of his voice he’s managed to win from him this evening, “enough with the lessons.”

“Well okay,” Erwin shrugs, “but even we get to learn about it. You ever seen a drawing of a monkey?”

Levi rolls his eyes. “I know what a fucking monkey looks like, Erwin, I’m not stupid. We do have books underground.”

“Well, humans evolved from that. Don’t ask me how, exactly,” Erwin frowns, “my father could have explained it. Something about – selection, and survival. I don’t know. But – I’m sorry, I was making a point with this.”

“Social animals,” Levi seems to prompt despite himself.

“Right.” Erwin leans back against the stable, folds his arms. “We like to live in groups and share things. Ideas, food, friendship. Most of the time we do it for the sake of it, not for any reason. So bluntly, Levi, it doesn’t matter if your friends die. You’re a human. You’ll make new ones.”

Levi turns to look at him, slowly. There’s a sneer on his face, tinged with horror. “Is that how you view the world, Erwin? You’re deranged.”

Erwin frowns. “I don’t mean – that’s not to say that our friends don’t matter. Our relationships. Of course they do. It’s just… can’t you see that losing people is a condition of living?”

“A mother, a father. At worst, a child. Few people lose more than that in their life, Erwin,” Levi snaps at him, “you’re right, we’re social animals, fine. We’re not made to lose – and lose, and lose, and lose, again and again. Just – leave me with the horses,” he mutters. “At least they don’t talk back.”

Erwin feels sad, looking at him. It’s sad to see anyone alone, or lonely. He doesn’t like that he feels partially responsible – he ripped Levi from the world he came from and put him here, with new rules and faces he doesn’t recognise. He remembers what Hange had said, earlier.

“Your friend,” he says softly, “Isabel. She liked the horses, didn’t she?”

Levi does not look at him. He does not stop stroking the horse’s mane. “Take her name out of your mouth before I rip out your tongue,” he says, quietly.

Erwin thinks perhaps Levi is right. Maybe he is deranged. He understands the loss – he understands the mourning. He can’t understand why Levi is _still_ mourning. His friends are dead. They’re not coming back. It seems so rational to Erwin that people only have a finite amount of time to spend mulling over the deaths of loved ones. He’s human, too. He sobbed when his father died. But once he was dead, he was gone. All Erwin had left to do was avenge him, or complete his dream. He will do both.

“Did they have dreams, Levi?” Erwin asks him.

Levi frowns at him. “Dreams?”

“Goals. Things they wanted to achieve.”

Levi seems to sink. He usually appears taller than he is – the broad muscles, lean back, gives the appearance of a larger man. But right now, he seems so small; his shoulders curled up to his neck, resting his brow against the horse’s forelock. “We wanted to live above the ground,” he tells him. “We were going to have our own house. There would be windows. We’d have meat at least twice a week, and a piece of fruit every day.”

“Is that it?” Erwin asks. He means it gently, as if to say, _is that what they dreamed?_

Levi glares at him. “It may not seem like much to someone like you,” he says fiercely, misunderstanding, “but to us it was everything.”

Erwin nods. “I know,” he says, “it’s a good dream. You should live it, for them.”

Levi turns back to his horse, scowling. “It’s not worth living it without them,” he says, bitterly, “I only dreamed it for them.”

So Levi is not someone motivated by self-interest, then. Erwin had suspected as much. “Well, that’s lucky for you then,” he says briskly, “because you’re in the very place filled with people who live for other’s dreams. Stop – drifting around,” Erwin tells him, incensed, “like a ghost. You’re still alive. You’re still young. Dream something else, for someone else.”

He expects Levi to snarl at him. Instead, he shuts his eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees, shortly. “Maybe.”

Erwin stands. “Will you come to bed?” He asks again. “The others are drinking, no one will notice.”

“No. Not tonight.”

Erwin nods. “Very well,” he says, “don’t stay out here all night, will you? I don’t want to find you frozen to the bone tomorrow morning. And watch that lamp,” he warns.

“Sure, Captain.” Only Levi uses his title that way – dismissive, uncaring. Only Levi dares to treat him like that, the same way he treats everyone else. “Sleep well.”

“You too.” He briefly squeezes his shoulder. “Yes,” he says again, “yes, sleep well, Levi.”

Later, he watches Levi’s glowing lamp from behind the curtains of his office. It stays lit, until at some point in the early hours of the morning, when it drifts across the quad. Slowly, lonely, bright.


	4. Chapter 4

Levi marks the Captain’s scars. _Erwin,_ he should think. Normal people call their lovers by the first name. Normal people love their lovers.

He has one arm thrown lazily behind his head, studying Levi from under lowered eyes. If he finds it strange that his subordinate wants to pin him to the bed to count bruises then he doesn’t mention it. Levi gets it’s just one more of his little oddities the Captain enjoys – like an interesting ornament, a child to be indulged, or maybe a favoured pet.

“This one,” Levi asks him, wheedling his finger into a silvery line that stretches from beneath his armpit to his collarbone.

The Captain is amused. “An accident in the corps. Training gone awry.”

“Could have lost the arm,” Levi notes.

“I was lucky,” the Captain agrees.

“This?” Levi continues, tracing his fingers along a collection of short, jagged, white flecks at the place shoulder joins throat.

“Bar fight.”

“Tch,” Levi rolls his eyes, “you’ve never been in a bar fight.”

He thinks the Captain might be watching him fondly, but it’s just as likely amusement. Levi is his new toy. He thinks, this Captain is the kind of person to have many toys – he can see it in his body, the strength of his arms, the way his muscles fill his skin. He has never had a stomach go concave with hunger. He would have been raised loved.

“If you say so,” he smiles. “You’re the expert.”

It doesn’t annoy him that the Captain says that, no. He doesn’t need the man to think well of him, just to fuck him hard, and keep the brass off his back. “I don’t make a habit of it, actually.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t do bars.” Levi wrinkles his nose. “They’re fucking filthy and filled with degenerates.”

The Captain’s eyebrows raise, he inclines his head a little. “Well there you go,” he says, “now I’m learning a little more about you.”

Levi regards him coolly. He jerks forward, suddenly, bracing his hands on either side of the Captain’s head; he pins his hand. It’s gratifying to see him flinch and be reminded that he still has that power. “And this one?” He asks, mockingly, digging his thumb into the Captain’s palm.

The Captain’s eyes are calm. “I gripped the sword of a street thug from the underground.”

“Is there a double-meaning to that?” Levi sneers.

“A euphemism,” the Captain corrects him, “and there is, if you want there to be.”

Levi feels his lips twitch despite himself. The Captain is quiet but goading in his silence – undisturbed by Levi leaning over him like a thief in the night, and by the memory of his blade in his hand. He finds the Captain’s lips; they taste the same as they did the last time they kissed, not one hour ago.

“Levi,” the Captain sighs. He takes back his hands, and Levi lets him, lets him wrap them around his hips, nails in his back. “Again?” He murmurs into his skin, moving from his mouth to kiss a neat line from his jaw to his shoulder. Even in the midst of passion, he’s so fucking orderly.

“Well I’m not an old man,” Levi says snidely, his cock hard between them. He lets the Captain hear him gasp when his mouth finds his nipple, tells himself it’s for show, back arched, his hands wrapping in the Captain’s soft blonde hair. It would be easy to break his neck, he thinks, and then – his hair is so soft, how does he get it so soft –

“I suppose I am old, by your standards,” the Captain snipes back, nose pressed to his sternum, “they don’t live long underground. I’m practically – elderly, if that’s anything to go – “

The Captain has stopped talking, head tipped back and lips slipped open, brows knitting together in a silent rapture as Levi rubs his palm against his softened cock, still sensitive, red flushed. It’s pretty, he’ll admit; every part of the Captain is pretty.

A hand on his wrist; “Don’t,” the Captain tells him.

Levi raises a brow. “Don’t?”

“Not me,” he continues, pulling Levi’s hand back to his shoulder, “you stay right there, thug. I haven’t finished getting my answers out of you.”

“Oh,” Levi smirks, and then, “ _oh,”_ he breathes, when the Captain pushes his hand back down between the hot gap of their thighs, hand drawing down his prick. “Is that what this is – “ he swallows, bends his head against the Captain’s shoulder, “about? Huh?”

“Hmm,” the Captain says. He seems to enjoy having Levi like this, spread across his thighs and tucked into him, probably as open as he’ll get him. “So, now I know my best soldier doesn’t like to drink, and likes to be fucked.” He cards his hand in Levi’s hair, drags back his head so their eyes are level. “Even if he pretends otherwise,” he adds, simpering.

Levi snaps his teeth at him, but the Captain just laughs. “You don’t mean that,” he says, “we both know if you still wanted me dead I’d be dead.”

“I don’t know,” Levi mutters, “maybe I just want to use you up, first.”

The Captain’s hands coil in his hair. Tighter. His neck feels like a spring, bunched tight. “That’s true,” Erwin tells him, quietly, “could be.” He is gathering Levi’s pre-come on his thumb, ringing the tip of his cock again and again, soft and steady. “But then, I have to wonder – you like getting fucked that bad, hmm?”

Levi – shuts his eyes. He lets the tug of his hair pull him back into the Captain’s grip, totally. “Why not?” He murmurs, “Life is short, and sex feels good.”

Between his thighs, the Captain’s come still has him loose – it takes nothing at all to push two fingers, covered in own pre-come, deep inside. The Captain gives him what he wants: a solid ride, a hard fuck. Three fingers, then. Levi’s skin prickles, sweat-slick; he grips the Captain’s shoulder for purchase, intent on his own release. His thighs are aching, holding him stiff across the Captain’s waist, trembling. He’s going to come. He hates himself for it – he shoves his fist in his mouth, covers his ragged sighs with silence and the red grooves of his teeth in the skin of hand.

“Good?” The Captain asks him, briskly.

Levi nods, weakly. “Yeah,” he agrees, allowing himself to slump onto his chest, limp and – rested. Spent. Feebly, he lifts his hand to pat the Captain on the head, twice. “Good job.”

“I was thinking,” the Captain says.

“Hmm?” In this post-fuck haze, Levi is almost willing to endure his thoughts, tucked up nice and safe against his slab of a chest.

“Those two that you came up with. The girl, the young man.”

Isabel. Furlan. He thinks the Captain is trying to avoid saying their names. There’s a short silence. “Yes,” is all Levi says.

“She was pretty. Were you sweet on her?”

Levi starts to feel himself stiffen like a corpse. _Don’t,_ he wills himself, _don’t send yourself away._ “She was a child,” is all he has to say about that, disgust rising in his throat.

“What about him? He was a handsome young man if I remember.”

Levi does not think of anything at all. “No.”

“Have you ever been sweet on anyone?” The Captain continues. It’s just a question. He’s just asking him the kind of simple questions that any lover asks, has a right to ask. He means it innocently, earnestly.

Levi wants to wring his throat.

“No,” he says again, with finality.

“But you – I mean, obviously you know what to do. There must have been someone. Not even a – boyhood tussle? A couple of whores?”

Levi sits up, slams his palms against the Captain’s shoulders. “I _don’t,”_ he spits, “sleep with whores. You understand me? Not once, not _ever._ Fuck every pathetic shitcunt who does.”

The Captain blinks at him owlishly. “I see,” he says, slowly, “I’ve upset you, haven’t I.”

Levi beats him again. “ _No,”_ he snarls, clearly upset.

“I’m sorry. I – “ the Captain even has the decency to pretend to be ashamed, “sometimes I don’t read things, well.”

And does truly look regretful, guilty, even. It’s gratifying to see it on his face and know he feels remorse, or even better, like a piece of shit, like a wheedling piece of shit. Levi wants to drive the knife deeper. “My mother was a whore,” he tells him, easily.

The Captain is very silent, and very still. “I see,” he says again.

“You see?” Levi mocks, “You _see?_ I thought you wanted answers, Captain.”

“Levi,” he says instead, voice soft, “you don’t have to. It’s fine.”

“My father was a no one,” he rattles off, “could have been a lord, could have been scum. Don’t know. Never cared. After she died, I should have died.” He grins, a sickly smile, with muscles unused to pulling in that direction, drops the worst of it into conversation. “Got found by a guy – you might have heard of him. Kenny the Ripper.”

The Captain stares. “You’re lying, now,” he says, like he’s figured it out, “you’re making fun of me.”

Levi laughs, and is surprised to be reminded by how ugly it sounds, like the rest of him. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” he spits. “It’s my life, idiot. Don’t call it a lie, I had to live it.”

He thinks he might have won. The Captain is no longer meeting his eyes, those slug-brows pulling together. What is that, confusion? Concern?

“What was he like?” The Captain asks him, defiant.

Levi glares. “Kenny?” He shrugs. “We lived together… three years. Maybe four. He knew my mother. I figured maybe he was a favourite client, or maybe he was the bastard who killed her making up for a guilty conscience. Never got to ask, he left me.”

“How old were you?”

Levi frowns. “I told you,” he said, “I don’t know.”

“I said twenty-four, on your records. Your birthday’s in December, by the way,” Erwin informs him. “In case that ever comes up.”

“Yeah? I mean – that might be right.” Levi pulls back. He finds himself sitting between the Captain’s thighs, his legs bracketing his hips. “I… I think that’s right, or thereabouts. I can’t remember, it’s… blurry. I don’t know.”

“Levi,” The Captain says.

Levi finds himself frowning. He looks at him.

“Maybe you just need to think logically,” he prompts him, gently. “How much of your mother do you remember?”

“I don’t – “ Levi realises it, then, with a sticky, swallowing rush in his stomach. “I don’t like to think too hard on it.” He watches him from under his eyes. “How much of your parents do you remember?” He asks, then. Voice quiet.

Erwin raises his brows, seems to think. “By seven, I could remember my father’s face clearly,” he tells him, “and he died when I was ten. Which means, if you are able to recall your mothers face, you were at least six or seven when she died.” He says it so confidently, happy to be giving him an answer.

“Tch,” Levi says softly, “I don’t remember her face at all.”

“Are there records?”

“Of births underground?” Levi stares at him incredulously. “Are you stupid? We’re not even citizens. Besides, my mother didn’t even give me a last name, Erwin. I don’t think she’d have…”

He’s thinking about it, now, what he remembers of it. That cramped room where he had likely been born, and had assumed he would die. He remembers the sickness of it, the sight of his knees, too big for his legs. The taste of the cockroaches. He can remember that, but not his mother’s own face, not even how it looked after she had died – but he remembers the face of the men who used to hurt her, how about that for sick?

That fucking rattling closet. Levi can feel it now, his numb feet, the little slit of light. He had to see too many things. Hear them, too. Kenny had been right; he needed to take that fear and let it spark him, let it light him up. Let the fear do the thinking for him. Once Levi had learned to challenge that anger, survival became as easy as breathing.

He thinks Kenny was never kinder to him then that first day. Fucking piece of shit. He hopes he’s rotting in hell.

“What about people she might have known? What about – Kenny?” Erwin prompts him. “There must be someone who remembers when she was pregnant.”

Erwin is so naive, he thinks. He can’t even imagine what it’s like to live so isolated, to have so few people care about you, that when you die you’re forgotten, scratched from human history. “Why do you care so much?” He says instead, irritated. “Why are you interrogating me?”

Erwin shrugs a shoulder. He reaches up to tuck a strand of Levi’s bangs behind his ear, frowning at the imperfection. “It seemed like it bothered you, is all,” he says, like people are that simple, like they just try to _help_ others with no reason.

He slaps his hand away but he thinks he regrets it. It had felt nice to have Erwin’s large fingers scratch along the side of his head, tugging lightly on his hair. He needs to cut it. In the middle of everything else… he’s been too busy.

“I’m a novelty to you,” Levi realises, dully.

“No.” Erwin is still intent on his hair, trying to flatten the rucks and bed-strands into something resembling a soldier’s style. “You’re a novelty to everyone, Levi.”

“Because I’m a thug,” he clarifies, “who can’t write, talks like an urchin, and measures up to your shoulder, huh?”

“Far less than my shoulder, actually,” Erwin says with his usual irritating accuracy. “And I personally think you’re picking up writing very well. But no, not because of that – maybe in spite of it. You’re the best soldier I’ve ever seen, Levi. Easily.”

Whether by design or accident, Erwin’s hand is still brushed up against his cheek. Levi decides to – tolerate it. “You just don’t know what – good fighting looks like,” he mutters, shifting his eyes away so he doesn’t have to stare directly at all that intensity, that earnestness.

“Maybe. But I know I’ve never seen anyone move the way you move, and I know that no matter how much you try, you can’t explain to the others how you do it. My hypothesis – “

“Hypothesis?” Levi interjects.

“A theory,” Erwin clarifies, “my theory is, if what you have can’t be taught, not even to our brightest soldiers…”

“Not even to you, you mean.”

“Yes, actually,” Erwin admits. “If even I can’t understand what you mean when you talk about – seeing gaps, and instinct, predicting movements before they even happen six steps in advance – “

“Have you ever considered you’re just not that bright?” Levi questions, snidely, not for the first time.

“ – then what were you born with to make you so special, hmm?”

“I was raised by a killer, Erwin. None of you were raised by killers.”

“Maybe. I thought, maybe. But then you said you only knew him a few years.”

This really is a puzzle for him, Levi realises. It’s almost funny to imagine him, staring up the ceiling at night, desperately trying to process how a rat like Levi surpasses him and all of his well-fed, sunlight-raised friends. It almost makes him laugh – and not that ugly, wretched thing from earlier, but a real laugh. He wants to take his thumb and smooth out the deep wrinkle from between Erwin’s caterpillar eyebrows.

“He was a very good killer, Erwin.” Levi can picture him right now, the sheer destruction of it – the first time he’d see Kenny slit the throat of a barkeep, not even a man who’d wronged him in any way, just a guy who gave him lip. He’d felt sick to his stomach. He’d almost cried. Kenny had gripped the collar of his shirt, hands still wet with blood: _You want to cry, little rat? You want to join your Mama? Look at him. I said_ look _at him, Levi –_

He blinks. “The best, actually.”

“Better than you?”

A beat. “Yeah,” Levi thinks, honestly, “better than me. He enjoyed it. At least, he did. He’ll be getting old, now – if he’s still alive, that is.”

He rests his hands in the centre of Erwin’s chest. What had they been talking about, before? Oh yes – Levi had been counting his scars. He creeps his fingers up his skin, mounting his sternum with his nails, and then stops, sighs. Erwin grips his hips, his waist; with hands that big, he could crush him if he wanted, and yet Levi lets him, anyway. Why? It’s not care. It’s barely even trust.

“Maybe he was your father,” Erwin tries, unsure. “Maybe that’s why you’re so… or maybe your real father was some kind of…”

“You really don’t think it’s possible I’m just – that good?” Levi asks, eyes cast down, “Of my own accord, huh? Has to be some great secret, some – ”

“No,” Erwin shakes his head, viciously. He sits up slightly, dislodging Levi down his hips. “That’s not what I mean, not at all. What you do is remarkable – it’s so remarkable that… if we could bottle it, distil it…”

“You can’t. It’s just me.”

“But you say this man, Kenny, that he had this gift. And _you_ have, too. So perhaps – “

“Ach, Erwin,” Levi slaps his hands against his chest, irritated, “enough, alright? What do you want me to say? I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for, I don’t even know them myself. Truth is I’m just a vicious little feral, okay? I know you don’t have many of them where you come from – “

“You don’t know where I come from.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “I don’t have to know, don’t you understand? You’re tall, and healthy – I _know_ you’ve never starved. The rest doesn’t mean anything. You could have parents who beat you or a creepy priest who touched you or seen – seen your best friend eaten by a titan. I know you were fed, that you can read, you have a mother who writes you loving letters, and I see that people respect you. They’ll never respect a person like me,” he mutters.

“My father was killed by the Military Police for teaching seditious lessons,” Erwin tells him, calmly.

Somehow, this, Levi did not anticipate. “And you enlisted anyway?!”

“Well, I wanted to go beyond the wall,” he explains, like that’s a normal man’s goal and not the dreams of a lunatic. “I wanted to see if he was right.”

“Right about what?”

Erwin watches him for a long time. So long, in fact, that Levi starts to question if he’s lost the ability to speak. “Captain?” He prompts.

“Do you really want to know?” Erwin asks. He looks careful, now. Guarded.

“About what?” Levi says with near exasperation.

“Beyond the wall.”

“What’s beyond the wall, Captain.”

A beat. Then he shrugs. “I don’t know. No one knows. In one-hundred years we’ve never got far enough to know. Isn’t that strange?”

Levi stares at him. “Are you fucking demented?” He asks him. “ _Strange?_ Have you even _seen_ a titan? How can you ask – “

“How can you not?” Erwin interrupts, “Are you incurious?”

Levi narrows his eyes. “I’m so very sorry,” he drawls, “if growing up beneath the earth has narrowed my horizons somewhat, _Erwin._ Some of us don’t think we were born for higher purpose.”

“You’ve never wondered, then. What’s the beyond the wall.”

“I’ve worried about when my next meal would be, who’s kill-list I’m on, the people I’ve wronged. And I know what’s beyond the wall, idiot, everyone does.”

“Titans?” Erwin asks.

“Titans,” Levi agrees.

Erwin’s face changes. His lips pull down, his eyes are hard. He’s – angry? No, worse: disappointed.

“I expected better from you,” he says.

It feels like a punch to the stomach, higher, beneath the ribs. You get punched there and it feels like the world has flipped, like there’s a gaping hole inside you that’s twisting round and round. Levi has disappointed him. He’s disappointed him. It makes him feel near sick – why? When has he ever cared what people thought of him before? He feels his head pulling back to his shoulders, hunched, as if protecting from a physical blow. He tries to swallow; his mouth is dry. He winces, presses his palm to his head. “Captain,” he tries.

“We should sleep while we can. If we’re both late back tomorrow they’ll ask why we were together.”

“No, Captain – “ Levi starts, feeling a sickening panic, “you haven’t finished.”

“Finished what?”

“Beyond the wall,” Levi gets out. It starts to make sense to him, even as he says it: yes, why wouldn’t there be something beyond the wall? Titans come from somewhere, don’t they? They’re not born so it’s not crazy to suggest they’re made. “If someone is making the Titans, they likely know we’re here. They’re sending them for a reason.”

Erwin lifts his chin, eyes shining. “Exactly,” he says, “yes, exactly, Levi, do you see? Our collective memory stops one hundred years ago, but that is not even a long time – my grandfather was born shortly after the walls went up, but his parents could tell him nothing about how they came to live here, just that they did. Even if we did flee Titans – how can it be that we are _certain_ there are no other human survivors? How do we know that for a fact?”

“We don’t,” Levi tells him, readily, “we don’t know it, at all.”

“Yes,” Erwin breathes, sitting himself up fully. “We don’t know. Everything about our world, when you pick at it for even a second… it starts to unravel. Do you see?”

And Levi does. When Erwin tells him, when he explains it, he sees it perfectly, sunlight-clear. “I do,” he says, “I understand.”

“But that’s why _you’re_ so important, Levi,” Erwin continues. He grips Levi’s shoulders, thumbs stroking up his throat, “you can take down Titan’s with ease. If we could understand what makes you the way you are, we could do the same.”

“Travel to the end of the world,” Levi says, breathlessly. He stares at him, those soft blue eyes, the strong nose, the hint of stubble on a thick jaw. Only Erwin could think these things, he thinks. He doesn’t know why he knows that, but he does. There’s a wonder in his eyes – worse than that, _hope._ It should make Levi sick.

But instead, it just makes him want to believe it.

A beat. Erwin settles back. “Exactly,” he says, smiling, “we could do exactly that.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for implied past sexual abuse/coercion of a character (not levi/erwin) and implied underage sexual activity

Tonight, Erwin is signing the death notes. He has put it off long enough – it’s been three days since they went behind the wall. Eleven dead. This is a job for Shadis, but he no longer has the stomach for it. He’s been in his cups since they returned.

“Levi,” Erwin had asked, approaching the man after his solitary, lonely training. “My office tonight, please.”

He’d risen his brows. “For what?” He asked, with that loping insubordination. It’s a fair question, of course.

“Lessons,” Erwin had told him. And now, he watches him. He has his tongue pressed between his teeth, the tip just sticking out from his lips. The way he copies the letters is painstaking, laboriously slow – Erwin wants to tell him, it doesn’t matter if it’s neat, it just matters that you understand them. But he thinks Levi is something of a perfectionist.

He sips his scotch, idly. He and Levi have that in common, he supposes.

Levi is so highly strung, wound tight like a wire. What does it take to unwind him? Erwin thinks: in bed, he’s quiet, methodical and satisfying, like even sex is a task that needs to be approached with neat, clean accuracy. So far as Erwin has learnt, he doesn’t have any particular proclivities – he’ll take it rough, soft, uncaring, on his back, on his knees. He always comes silently. He always cleans himself after, immediately. Erwin realises that Levi preoccupies his thoughts more than he should. The feel of him, the smell of him, his taste. He wonders if he occupies such a space in Levi’s mind.

“What’s a – wa-hale?” Levi asks him.

Erwin swills his drink in his mouth, swallows. Puts his glass back down onto the desk. “A whale,” he corrects. “The ‘h’ is silent.”

“Why?”

He smiles. “W-hy,” he illustrates. “You just said it yourself. It adds plosive.”

Levi glares at him. “Great,” he mutters, “now I need to ask what the fuck plosive means.”

“It’s like – I don’t know how to describe it, really,” Erwin frowns. “It’s the – feel of word. The heaviness of it.”

Levi sighs. “So words have weight now,” he says, tiredly. “Amazing.”

“Sorry,” Erwin smiles, ruefully. “It’s strange, teaching you this. It makes me remember how much about how things are we just take for granted.”

“So?” Levi says, as if prompting him.

“So what?”

“What’s a whale?”

“Oh.” Erwin frowns. “Read it in the sentence.”

Levi sits ups a little straighter. The only lines on his face come from between his brows when they knit together in concentration. “‘I will kill it,” Levi reads slowly, haltingly. “‘a wa – whale, bigger than a titan. I will sleep inside it’s moth -- ’ no, mouth,” he corrects, “‘and list it’s belly from the inside out.”

“List?” Erwin queries.

Levi frowns at the page. “Tch,” he corrects, “slit.”

Erwin feels his lips twitching. “It’s a mistake,” he says, with careful wonderment. Another one – how many is that now? Erwin remembers his father’s neat writing, all the books and their titles, the page number of their mistakes noted in the margins. _P.49; Mentions ‘cocoa’ – form of sugar?? Treat? Dessert??? P.216; Coffee? A different kind of tea?_

“What kind of mistake?” Levi asks.

Erwin laughs, softly. “There are very few books from before the walls went up. There are some – unedited, unchanged, but to own one is treason, you understand. And there are very few in existence. But what books do remain – or I should say, the stories that remain, sometimes hold little mistakes. Like this,” Erwin says, picking up the book and reading the spine. “ _The Wonderful Adventures of Marco Markus,”_ he smiles. “It’s a fairy-tale, for children. Whoever was in charge of removing humanity’s stories might have thought it was above notice. And so, the mistake was allowed to remain.”

“You have lots of books.” It sounds like an accusation. “Do you collect them?”

A beat. Erwin is conscious of the need to be careful, very careful. “Yes,” he says, “I do.”

And Levi fixes him a knowing stare. “So,” he says, pointedly. “What’s a whale?”

Erwin picks at his glass and sips. He brushes off his lips with his thumb, and folds his hands in front of him. “I don’t know,” he lies.

“Your father never mentioned it between his – what did you call them? Seditious lessons?”

“My father never told me anything of the sort,” Erwin tells him, blandly.

“Except about mistakes,” Levi returns. “You must care about the mistakes, Captain, otherwise you wouldn’t have shelves of books for children.”

“Maybe I’m just sentimental,” Erwin tries.

“You’re not sentimental,” Levi says, flatly. “You’re the least sentimental person I’ve ever met. If there are only a handful of unedited books left in existence, why do you know they exist?”

Erwin shrugs. “I’ve heard stories of other people who faced punishment for owning one.”

“So where do you hide yours?” Levi asks.

Erwin scoffs. “Even if I had a book like that in my possession – it would be stupidity in the extreme to keep it in my office, as a Captain in the Survey Corps. We’re already suspected of being heretics.”

“It would be stupid,” Levi agrees, “it would be incredibly risky. As risky as – say, facing a titan in combat on the off-chance you get two-foot further into uncharted territory than the last time you went beyond the wall.”

Well, what should Erwin say to that? He likes Levi. Truly, he does – aside from the things they do in bed, the intimate details of his body that only Erwin is privy to, he has come to view him as a friend. Or maybe that’s too – not a friend. Associate is too clinical, lover sounds too personal, partner too enduring. Confidante? Comrade? Companion?

But he’s teaching Levi to read, isn’t he. He doesn’t have to. If all he wants from the man is his skill, he could have kept him illiterate – the less he knows, the less threat he would be to Erwin. He’s still hiding knives beneath Erwin’s bed, thinking Erwin doesn’t notice, and he hasn’t forgotten Mike’s advice: _Kid’s not going to forgive you, not ever. Doesn’t matter if he’s complacent now – as far as he’s concerned, you killed his friends, Erwin. He’ll never forget. You shouldn’t, either._

 _I must trust him_ , he thinks. Otherwise he wouldn’t teach him; he wouldn’t allow him in his office, in his bed, knowing he could kill him; he wouldn’t let him practise his writing from a book Erwin knows holds a chance – a small chance – of revealing a mistake that could get Erwin hanged.

There is no word for what Levi is, to him. What do you call an equal other than an equal?

 _A counterpart,_ Erwin thinks.

Erwin stands. Levi watches him trailing his fingers along the wall of books until he finds what he’s looking for. He had hidden it, of course. His mother wanted to burn it, along with everything else that Erwin smuggled out the day he left home. He’d replaced its cover with another: _The Trees Within the Walls._

He lays it on the table and thumbs to the right page. “A whale,” Erwin points. He flips the book so Levi can see. “It’s a fish of some kind. It lives – well,” he half-laughs, “it lives in the ocean.”

Levi stares at the pages. “The ocean?”

“A huge lake,” Erwin tells him, “that covers all the world. The world is round,” he says, “like a circle. No – a sphere. And the ocean covers most of it with salty water, undrinkable.”

A line of irritation has appeared between Levi’s brows. “Ach, Erwin,” he mutters, “I thought you were being serious,” he says, and sounds disappointed.

“I am being serious.”

Levi stares at him, flatly. “We live on a ball,” he says, flatly, “covered in water. What’s the point of that?”

“Why does their have to be a point? The moon’s a sphere, isn’t it?”

“It’s a disc.”

“That rotates,” Erwin explains, patiently. “We know it’s a sphere.”

“But that’s impossible. We must be on the top of it, then.” Levi frowns. “Maybe that’s where everyone else went. They just fell off the bottom.”

“No,” Erwin corrects, delicately, aware Levi is prickly when he thinks he’s made a mistake, “because gravity. Think about it: everything travels down, no? We’re all glued to the earth. That is – if there are other people, outside the walls.” He taps his finger against the drawing on the page of a gargantuan fish with a ruddered belly. “A whale,” he says.

Levi traces the paper. “It feels…” he frowns, “it feels too real to be made up. No one could just invent this, could they?”

Erwin shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t think so.”

“Ocean,” Levi repeats, as if trying the word on for size. “I don’t understand how all that water can just – exist. Why doesn’t it ever overflow?”

“Canyons beneath the seabed,” Erwin answers, confidently. “We live above the sea-level.”

Levi huffs, disbelievingly. “Is now a good time to admit I don’t know how to swim?”

Erwin laughs. “Mike will teach you. Grew up by a lake, best swimmer I’ve ever seen.”

Levi glowers at him. “You realise he’d try to drown me, right?” He carefully flips through the book, delicately turning the pages between his index finger and thumb. Erwin doesn’t know if he can read the words fluently yet, but he seems to be enjoying the pictures. “I could report you,” he says, quietly.

“You could,” Erwin agrees. “You wouldn’t even have to kill me, now. One word to an MP is all it would take.” He tips his head to the side, “You could have whatever you wanted,” he tells him mildly. “I have too many enemies. A house in Mitras, money, your freedom. Real freedom,” Erwin presses him, “because I would be gone, wouldn’t I?”

Levi looks tired. For a moment, Erwin stiffens – he wonders if perhaps he has miscalculated, gravely. Levi’s silence stretches on, and on.

“There is no real freedom,” he murmurs, eventually. “Not in these walls. Maybe not anywhere.” He looks up at Erwin, direct, combative. “Tell me more,” he demands.

Erwin tells him about turtles and lions and dinosaurs. “They found their bones?” Levi asks, “And bigger than titans?”

“I don’t think titans existed then. But yes, bigger than titans, even.”

Levi’s eyes widen, just slightly. Almost like surprise, if Erwin believed he could be surprised. “Impossible,” he says, but doesn’t sound sure. “There’s no damn good reason for anything to be that big. Big ass birds, and – what was it?”

“Lizards.”

“Lizards,” Levi tries the word and it sits funny in his mouth, Erwin can tell. “You’re making fun of me,” Levi accuses, but Erwin just shakes his head fondly.

“I didn’t write the book, Levi,” he says. “Could be, someone somewhere is making a joke at all our expense, but – “

There’s a knock at the door, but the person doesn’t wait for Erwin to usher them in, which means it can only be one person. Mike is holding a stack of letters atop a parcel. “These just came,” he announces, unwary and uncaring of what he just interrupted. “I’d salute, but…” He frowns, noticing the back of Levi’s head. “What’s he doing here?”

Erwin shuts the book, carefully, as so not to draw attention to it. Mike knows so many of his secrets, but Erwin has never burdened him with this one.

“Just discussing the best ways to put down a dog,” Levi says casually with a baleful glare in Erwin’s direction.

“Leave them with me,” Erwin answers instead, nodding at him gratefully.

Mike is squinting at them, suspicious. “What are you doing?” He asks, frowning at them. He stands at Levi’s back. Erwin sees him sniff, once, surreptitious, and Levi’s resulting tension, the pressed lips, squared shoulders.

“I,” Erwin starts to lie, “was just – “ what? What could he possibly say that would justify having Levi sitting at his desk. “Going over – “

Mike leans down and sniffs, long and suspicious, at the top of Levi’s head. He narrows his eyes. Squints at Levi, then at Erwin, then at Levi again. “Why – “ he starts.

“He’s teaching me to read,” Levi says, bluntly.

Mike blinks. He straightens. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. He’s a good teacher. Taught me.”

Erwin smiles at the memory of it, spending the weekend mornings in the classroom. Mike had resented him, then, but he wouldn’t have passed if Erwin hadn’t forced it.

“If you had paid more attention, you might have come first,” Erwin reminds him. He’d come third in the end, just behind Erwin and Nile.

“Oh, I definitely would have come first,” Mike snorts, scattering the parcel and letters on the desk. He blows air aimlessly upwards to brush his hair out of his eyes. “Good luck with that, Levi,” he says, only a touch snidely, before he leaves.

Erwin raises his brows. “I thought you didn’t want them to know,” he says with disbelief.

“Do you know how weird it is that you have a friend who can smell when people are fucking?” Levi asks him, irate. He helps himself to Erwin’s letters, squints at the envelopes. “Your mother has written,” he says, throwing the large parcel in Erwin’s direction.

He frowns at it. Why would his mother need to send him such a hefty package? He works the twine free with his thumb and tears at the brown wrapping. There’s a letter inside. And behind that –

“Oh,” Erwin says, quietly. His father’s notebook. Mother hadn’t let him take it – why would she, he was her husband. He scans the letter, frowning. “I see,” he murmurs.

“Something wrong?” Levi asks.

Erwin swallows, folds the letter neatly, and places it in a drawer in his desk. “No,” he lies, “nothing wrong. She wants me to visit, of course.” He carefully peels open the pages with what he’s aware is near-reverence. “I don’t have any siblings,” he says, like that’s an explanation of something, like that’s an answer to a question Levi asked. “My father was – he’d document things, you see. Things he noticed in the world around him.”

“He sounds very,” Levi seems to be looking for a word. “Like you,” he settles for.

“Yes,” Erwin agrees, murmuring. He sifts through the pages. There’s a portrait hidden between them, nestled between the lines of his father’s looped scrawl. Erwin remembers posing for when it was drawn. He does look like his father now, he thinks, but admittedly he has more of his mother about him, too. He has her hair, her eyes, her mouth. And she’s younger here, without a blankness to her eyes.

“Can I see?” Levi asks.

Erwin presses his lips into a line, flips the portrait between his two fingers. He watches Levi’s face shift from sullen to – wait, what is that? Does he think this is _funny?_ “What’s the matter?” Erwin demands, because Levi’s clearly chewing on his lips to stop himself from smiling. He always knew the no-smiling thing was an act. He frowns. “I don’t get it.”

“Erwin,” Levi says, trying to keep his voice level, “did you, uh. Did you always just have a man’s face, or is that a bad drawing?”

“A man’s – “ Erwin splutters, “I have big features! It’s not – “ he huffs, folds his arms, “ – it’s not a _man’s_ face, it’s cute.”

“Tch,” Levi says sympathetically, “is that what your mother told you?”

Erwin snatches back the portrait. “Like you can talk,” he mutters.

“Something you want to say louder, Erwin?”

Erwin doesn’t, because if he does, he’ll say something he regrets. He balances his chin on his hand and glares.

“You look like your father,” Levi offers.

“Thanks.”

“You know,” Levi says, carefully, turning back to his writing, “if I had a mother, I would visit her.”

“Well you don’t,” Erwin replies, ugly and flat. Levi puts down his pen. He glares at him.

“You have a mean streak Erwin.”

Erwin folds his arm. “Sorry,” he mutters, “I didn’t mean to – it’s just, I don’t want to go home.”

“Yeah, it must be shitty,” Levi mutters, “having people who care about you.”

And the thing is, Levi is right. He’s completely right. Perhaps no one else would say this to Erwin’s face, but it is pathetic – he’s his mother’s only child, and he hasn’t visited her in years. How long can he run from the shame? Mother doesn’t care; she only wants to see him before – before anything else. Levi is right. Levi seems to see things more clearly than any other person Erwin has ever met. If Erwin was a better man, he would take two-weeks leave and go _home._ He’d never have to live with regret if he did.

But Erwin is not a better man.

“Don’t be self-pitying Levi,” he sighs, “it doesn’t suit you.”

“Cunt,” Levi breathes.

Erwin raps the paper in front of Levi with his fingers. “Spell it, and I’ll let you out early,” he tells him.

He lets Levi puzzle that one and rips through letters with his thumb. Taxes, the insurance for the house in Stohess he never uses, an invitation to tea with Lady Meyer (fifty, red hair, widowed, he reminds himself), and a letter from Sir Morley. He decides not to think about his mother; he files her letter away in his desk drawer, partitions thoughts of home in his mind. A problem for another day, he thinks. He can’t be concerning himself with personal issues when he has so much work on his plate, anyway.

“Well I’m not going to get it,” Levi is saying, “so you might as well tell me. Is it cunt with a ‘c’ or a ‘k’?”

Erwin is staring at his letter with dismay, scanning through its lines. “Goddamn,” he says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. _You’re going to get dents there if you keep doing that,_ his mother used to tell him.

“Good news?” Levi asks dryly.

“Morley,” Erwin mutters, reaching for his paper to draft an urgent reply. “He’s the parliamentary chief, he tables the votes on military budget. Parliament,” Erwin starts to explain, “it’s where nobles – “

“I know what the fucking parliament is,” Levi interrupts, derisively. “You patronising bastard.”

“Well he’s giving us notice,” Erwin continues, “that – damn him,” he grits, “that he’s seen fit to schedule a review of spending at the end of this month. We were supposed to have more time,” he defends, “someone must have bribed him to push up the timetable – “

“So? Bribe him back.”

Erwin shoots Levi a look he’s aware must be withering. “If it were that simple, don’t you think I would have?”

“Is it not that simple?” Levi leans back in his chair, folds his arms.

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Blackmail him.”

“I don’t have anything on him,” Erwin seethes. A man like Morely – he’ll have vices, of course, but he’s self-made. He’ll know all about paper trails, and a cleverer man than Lobov no doubt –

“He has a wife, doesn’t he? Children?”

Erwin frowns at him. “If you’re suggesting we engage in some kind of – extortion through threat of violence…”

“I was going to say, he has a taste for young men, actually,” Levi replies, “and I don’t know if his wife knows, but I’m sure those Wallist creeps who fund him would be interested. And since when does extortion through threat of violence bother you?” He adds.

“Not _children,”_ Erwin protests, “how do you know about Morely’s predilections?”

“Isabel was a child,” Levi says, “and I worked his people for years, Erwin. You learn a thing or two.”

Erwin senses they’re having two different conversations at once. He reaches across the table and plucks Levi’s pen from his hand. “Stop,” he orders, “start again. Why do you have intimate knowledge of the parliamentary chief’s sexual preferences?”

“If I tell you, will you tell me why you hate your mother?”

Erwin feels his eye twitch. “I don’t hate my mother,” he replies, levelly. Which is true. Of course, he doesn’t hate his mother. That would be absurd. Inhuman, in fact.

Levi tsks. “Alright then,” he says, leaning back in his chair, arms folded. He’s got a look on his face like he’s won something, undeservedly. “Let me know how it goes with Morely. This has been fun,” he tells him, “I’ll almost feel sorry for you when they shut everything down. Will you join the MPs or the Garrison?”

The reality is that Erwin doesn’t want to talk about his childhood with Levi. He was raised in a wealthy town, with two parents, a warm home, good food, new clothes every season. There is nothing he can tell Levi about where he comes from that doesn’t make him look indulged at best, pathetic at worst. He doesn’t even expect Levi to be able to understand his pathological avoidance of home – how could he, he’s never had one.

He carefully rearranges the letters on his desk, busy work for himself while Levi sits opposite him, expectantly. He neatens them, files them into piles, and finally, folds his hands on the tabletop. “She’s not well,” he tells him, careful with his words. “She’s never been well, even before my father died. I don’t hate her. I love her very much. I don’t know how to talk to her anymore.” He can’t stand the quiet of that house, the ticking clock, his mother’s empty eyes, empty words. It makes him want to shake her. _Just be robust,_ he would scream, if he was the type of person to do so.

There’s a brief silence. Erwin rubs his thumb over his hand, a miniscule tic, perhaps the only tell he has when he’s nervous. Not like Levi – he’s noticed Levi will chew the inside of his cheek when he’s uneasy, brush his nose when he’s nervous. He wears his heart on his sleeve far more clearly than he thinks.

Levi’s not really looking at him, more through him. “I see,” he says, a little distracted.

“Now you,” Erwin tells him, patiently.

Levi looks at him. “Hmm? Oh,” he frowns. “Morely and his boys. Easiest money I ever made,” he says, with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face.

Erwin digs his thumbnail into his hand. “Doing what?” He asks, trying to keep himself impassive, not thinking about Levi all splayed out in his bed, the soft skin of his inner thighs, his clever fingers, his pink tongue.

“Sick freaks go below for all the shit they don’t want their wives to know about,” Levi explains. “Yeah – wives, and other people, too. You see pastors, parliamentarians, MPs, lords, merchants. Pick your poison. It’s easy enough robbing them while they’re down there but you’re limited, understand? No one in their right mind carries a heavy bag of gold on their hip, Underground. Even those creeps weren’t that stupid,” he adds, with a humourless smirk.

“Morely was one of them?” Erwin asks. “How many names do you know?”

Levi raises a finger, indicating he should pause. “I picked their pockets, but I wasn’t bright enough for the politics or pretty enough for the sex. I was one ugly kid,” he admits, “like you,” he adds, snidely.

Erwin lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He finds that hard to believe, but Levi says it with enough sincerity that he’s knows it’s true. He’s relieved he won’t have to add one more horror to the laundry list that Levi occasionally drops into conversation.

“Furlan, though,” and Levi’s face tightens into something slightly queasy looking. “I mean, you saw him. He was a pretty kid, so he knew all kinds of… knew his way around things. I fell in with him when I was, I don’t know. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe. He had some hits out on his head, stupid stuff,” Levi mutters, like the sting of it still bothers him, “Clay and his men – had it in for us. My fault, probably. So Furlan’s crew turned on us, too. It was just the two of us for a while. We had to get creative.”

That’s more information about himself that Levi has ever really divulged, implicitly. “Honeypot,” Erwin guesses, and Levi actually smiles, like he’s impressed.

He snaps his fingers. “Honeypot,” he agrees. “He was lots of people’s favourites. They’d pay money to have him at their parties, sure, but that’s not where the real money came from. While Mr Fuckwit was distracted or Mistress Shitbrains was cooing all over him, I’d get in, get out. Jewellery, cash, art. If they got too handsy, or tried to take more then we’d offered, I’d take care of that, too. Triple earnings. The money they gave us, the stuff we stole, and payment we’d extort afterwards.”

“There was nothing about that on your rapsheet,” Erwin admits.

“Course not,” Levi smirks. He’s proud, Erwin realises. “None of them want the guilt by association. Not everyone bought our services but Furlan was at enough summer balls to get a good lay of the land. Like, uh,” he seems to be thinking, “what’s his name, Zackly? You know he’s a pervert, right? Not an illegal pervert or anything – but I mean,” and Levi’s eyes widen, “I heard rumours.”

Erwin finds himself leaning forward. “What kind of rumours?” He asks.

And Levi leans back, self-assured. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know,” he teases. “You got your eyes on the top job?”

“No,” Erwin says, and he’s probably telling the truth. “Knowledge is power, Levi.”

“Yeah, sure. Furlan used to think so. But we had to stop, eventually,” Levi says distractedly. “He didn’t want to, but – it was wearing on him, you know? The shit he had to live with,” Levi shivers. “He was the brains. And good with his hands, too,” Levi adds, as if Erwin needs to be impressed. “He fixed up three sets of ODM gear for us, figured that out on his own.”

Levi is chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “he had a shitty life. A shitty, short life. He suffered and suffered and then he died.”

Erwin’s fingers itch to reach for his cigarettes. Something to still that sickening fluttering in the top of his stomach, an excuse to avoid the vacant disgust in Levi’s eyes. “Yes,” he says, and it’s not an agreement, it’s just speaking for the sake of saying _something_.

“Yes,” Levi repeats, flatly. “Sorry. Does it hurt when you remember they were people?”

Erwin resists the urge to rub his eyes. “Levi,” he starts, softly.

“No, sorry,” Levi interrupts him. “I wouldn’t want to make this awkward for you. I can tell you feel – well, probably not guilty.” He narrows his eyes at him. “But you’re human enough to feel shame. It’s okay. I’m ashamed, too.”

He pushes the papers back on the desk. One of Erwin’s pens scatters and rolls onto the floor. “What,” he sneers, “nothing to say? Don’t you have a lesson for me?”

Erwin could. Isn’t that the truth of it? He could teach him a lesson. He could use his words, and the sick thing is, Levi might believe him. Or he could teach him in other, more brutal, ways. He could never overpower him but he has other points of pressure. Erwin is realising, with a stomach-turning feeling, that even though he can, he doesn’t want to. He can’t force Levi. He can’t own him, not if he won’t let him.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he says instead, choosing his words carefully.

Levi stands. He paces. “Don’t I?” He mutters. “Like I’m not sitting here, like I haven’t – rolled over, like a dog,” he shudders. “Letting you teach me, and feed me, and pet me. How fucking – how desperate am I, sitting here with you.”

He turns away with disgust. “Desperate for what?” Erwin asks. “Levi. We can’t change what happened.”

“You took everything from me,” Levi tells him, just the back of him – tensed shoulders, sharp spine – visible. “Give it back.”

“I can’t,” Erwin says, helplessly. He didn’t want to fight. Maybe, naively, he had thought they were past it.

“You _can,”_ Levi snarls, whipping round. “You could let me go. No one would notice, they wouldn’t care. They’d be glad I was gone.”

Erwin remembers that Levi is not his friend, nor his counterpart. Levi is a dangerous criminal who he mislead into joining his ranks and, as a result, cost him his closest friends. Levi’s eyes are not that of a student to a teacher, or a lover to a partner. It’s an assassin to a target. He stares at Erwin with an unbridled hate, impossible to hide.

“Fine,” Erwin is hearing himself say, standing. He braces his fists on his desk. “Give me back the letters,” he demands, “and the words. Give me back everything I’ve given you, if you’re so inclined, and then you can leave.”

“Keep your whales,” Levi tells him, brutally. “Your dinosaurs and – gravity, whatever else. Fucking hell,” he mutters, rubbing his hand over his face. “I must be pretty sick in the head, huh?” He presses his palm to his temple, “I almost let myself forget. That’s why you’re so dangerous, Erwin,” and again Erwin thinks it’s the most truth anyone’s ever said to his face, “you make people believe in you, even me,” he huffs incredulously. “You let them follow you, and you let them take the fall. You’re fucking terrifying.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Erwin tells him, stiffly. “I never asked for people to trust me.”

“And I never asked to be born the way I am, but it didn’t stop you from taking me anyway.” Levi turns away, like maybe he’s exhausted himself. “I never asked to be strong. I just wanted to live. What other people want doesn’t matter to you, Erwin. You’re selfish.” He looks over his shoulder; his eyes flash. “I’m sure your mother would agree.”

“Get out,” Erwin tells him, coldly. He doesn’t want to fight like this, with words, not when Levi knows more about him than he should. Out of Erwin’s own foolishness, of course – his, what, desire for Levi to _know._ Like Levi is a trusted friend, a confidante, someone who could understand or shoulder his burdens with him.

For him.

Levi gives him another one of those empty laughs. “I’m going to kill you,” he tells him. He means it. There’s an inevitability written into his face, baked into the line of his shoulders. “You realise that, don’t you? If you keep me, you’re signing your own death note. I’ll do it. I won’t be able to stop myself.”

“Why?” Erwin demands. “Are you an animal? Can’t you control it?”

Levi shakes his head, like Erwin is stupid, like he’s not privy to some great secret only Levi can understand. “I just know it, Erwin,” he says tiredly. “Same way I know when someone’s going to throw a knife in my direction. Instinct.” He doesn’t even sound angry. Just resigned.

“Get out,” Erwin orders, again.

“Touched a nerve?” Levi sneers. “Just look in a mirror, Erwin, it saves me the trouble.”

“Get out before I do something I regret,” Erwin tells him, and it’s probably true. He’s not usually so dispossessed. Levi clouds his head.

“So now he wants me to leave,” Levi mutters. “How do you think this ends, Erwin?”

Right now? With Erwin breaking Levi against a wall, his fingers in his mouth, hand wrapped around his throat, squirming beneath him. He’s never heard Levi beg – he doesn’t even know if he knows how. He thinks Levi must see it across his face, because he sneers at him, and Erwin has to look away, jaw tight, cheeks heating.

“I’ll write your death note,” Erwin says, stiffly, “or you’ll write mine, probably.”

“Yeah,” Levi agrees. “Probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do u think stockholm exists in the aot universe bc levi's got that syndrome 😩 he's fr a victim tho 💀 💀


	6. Chapter 6

Levi is in the town near headquarters on the rumour that traders will be bringing luxuries from Mitras. Hange told him, 11AM, the first Saturday of the month, and the contact who gets them alcohol has told them they’ll have tea, which ‘I’ve noticed you drink a lot of, Levi’. It’s not like them to lie, at least, not intentionally. Levi is torn between instinctive dislike of them, too loud, occasionally misjudged, persistent, and a grudging respect for a person who is so clearly wrapped up in their own head but makes genuine effort to reach out to him. From Hange, it doesn’t even feel like pity, or fear, or admiration; it’s like they view him as unsolved puzzle, and so have resolved themselves to fix him, somehow.

But today, the balance is tipping firmly from _will not kill_ into _actively tolerable_ ; Hange has come through, and the traders are stocked with ten tins of pomegranate tea – one of the rarest, in Levi’s experience, because the fruit is so hard to grow all the dried seeds go straight to the pantries of Interior. Levi would know: he used to steal from them. He’s stupidly happy with his purchase, almost embarrassingly so, knowing that the tea is his, that he bought it with money honestly earned, that tonight he’ll sip it in Erwin’s office while –

No. No, he won’t. He has not spoken to Erwin in a week, not once, beyond grunts in the training yard. Their lessons have stalled. Which is fine by Levi – he never wanted them in the first place. Sitting in that office, three times a week, reading letters that flip themselves round no matter how hard he squints at them, Erwin droning on about – politics, or some story from his youth, or even the occasional piece of gossip about people Levi does not care for. The office was always too warm, Erwin was always patronising, half the time it just made him want to – to – to fall asleep, with boredom.

And on those other nights, when the floor scuffs his knees, and he watches Erwin’s ugly eyebrows knit together, lips parted, his hands carded in Levi’s hair. Or the loose papers that stick to his ass when he sits on the desk and throws his legs around Erwin’s shoulders. Levi can find other ways to relieve stress. Better ways, than bedding down with the sociopath who killed his friends.

He’s careful to tuck his tea into his saddlebag, feeding his horse – _his_ horse, so he really should name her, he thinks – his apple core. He used to eat the core, would devour it. Now, he feeds it to an animal. How strange.

He picks up on the commotion some ways behind him, listening with one ear cocked as he starts to mount his horse. A shouting man, a whiny kid, a couple of bystanders, tittering. Not his business, of course. “Typical,” he overhears, “the traders bring them in, like fleas.”

Levi turns, watches a man shove a kid out the door of his – tailors, he thinks. What’s a kid hoping to steal from a tailor? If it’s money you want, you’ve got to wait ‘til night at least. “And stay out, you grubby fucking rat,” the tailor sneers, landing a kick on the kid’s ass for good measure. The brat goes sprawling in the street. The man pulls back his foot, and kicks him again, smack in the stomach. And then again, except this time he’s going for his head –

Levi doesn’t feel his feet moving, of course. He doesn’t think at all. He wraps his hand around the man’s throat and lifts. He’s has about forty pounds on him, is four inches taller than him, and has a gut. Levi barely even feels the strain, thumping into the wall of his shop.

“Are you a fair man?” He asks him, tilting his head to the side. “I bet you think of yourself as fair. I bet you think you’re just giving out justice.”

The man nods wildly, scratching at Levi’s hand where it grips his throat. “I am,” he wheezes, “please, I have – my children – “

“Do you beat your children?” Levi asks him levelly, squeezing tighter. “If you died, and your children were left with nothing, would you like for me to beat them if they stole from me to eat?”

The man is shaking his head, eyes watering, cheeks redding into purple. “Please,” he says again, “you’re a – a soldier, please – “

“Do we beat children now?” He hears himself asking. “Does that seem fair to you? Does it seem _just?”_

The man is starting to slacken. Levi drops him, abruptly, lets him smack his tailbone into the stone steps of his shop. He picks at the child by the front of his shirt, drags him up. “You,” he says, “are you hurt?”

The boy’s eyes are wide. He shakes his head.

“Fine.” Levi tugs him closer, their noses almost pressing. “That was embarrassing,” he snarls, “if you want to live, _get better.”_

And then he drops him, too. _Fuck,_ he thinks, pulling his hood over his face, _I’m turning into the old man._

Not for the first time, he wonders where Kenny is now. Dead, most likely. Not for any particular reason; he wouldn’t be too old, but Levi can’t imagine what job he’s gotten himself into that would mean going quiet for so well for so long. He’d always relished the title ‘ripper’, like a badge of pride whenever someone brought it up, liked having his name attached to it. Fucking freak.

Course, Levi isn’t ungrateful. He’s many things but thankless. If Kenny hadn’t been the wheedling lanky lunatic he was, Levi would be dead. Or worse. There’s always worse than dead, Underground. Like when he worked for Clay – too young to know better. If Kenny hadn’t left him, he’d have knocked him flat for even thinking of it, but back then Levi was didn’t have anyone else, and Clay’s crew were a bandage over a wound. Even if it meant – doing things he would not otherwise have liked to do. Levi is short, Levi is sharp. He could have gone it alone. Truthfully, he was just lonely.

He thinks about it now. There’s probably no life for him Underground, not anymore. Not that he would want there to be, but he’s aware that his situation up here isn’t exactly tenable, either. There’s a chill in the air. Soon, it will be winter. It’s almost been a year since they accepted Lobov’s job and Levi has less to show for it than when he started. _I should have just taken the prison sentence,_ he thinks, not for the first time. At least prison is above ground. At least his friends would still be alive. He stroke’s his horse’s nose, mounts.

On the slow ride back, he tries to list the things he has worth having. This horse, for one. She’s gentle, and quick, and loyal. Levi had a dog once, Underground; or more like, the dog had him. Missing one eye with it’s ears and tail docked, probably an ex-fighter that got loose, or thrown away when it wasn’t worth anything in the pits. Kenny had killed it when he found out. He was right to; it had fleas, and Levi was giving it food he couldn’t really afford to waste, and the thing was suffering, anyway. But still. He’d sobbed like a baby.

He likes the air. Underground, he’d go through months with blocked lungs, a wheezy chest. He doesn’t know how to articulate to people what it’s like living in a place where the sun can hit your skin so he doesn’t bother. The air, the grass, the falling leaves in orange and red and purple. Levi’s seen them before, just about; some of his marks had trees in their gardens. But this is his first autumn Above. To be able to ride like this – unfettered, in almost endless space, is a luxury no one understands.

He spurs his horse faster, enjoying the breeze whipping through his hair. Food. Food is good. It’s not nice, it’s not even of quality, but there’s plenty of it. Levi hasn’t been hungry in a year. He’s seen his cheeks fill out, his thighs thicken, putting some fat over his muscles for the first time in his life. He can’t remember ever not being able to feel his own ribs beneath his fingers. He thinks all of it – the food, the sun – might be increasing his mood. Happiness is an indulgence when you’re trying to survive. Maybe there’s something about the sun that makes people happier.

And then, there are the words. When Levi didn’t read, he didn’t have to worry about them. He’d never had to read books, except for the ones Furlan would sometimes show him, as if to make him realise what he was missing. He’d taught Isabel, and she was a more willing student than Levi by far. It had made her proud, he thinks, to read things for him. Like she was helping him, like she was useful. She always thought she wasn’t – Levi wanted to tell her, _you don’t have to be, you’re my sister. You could be legless and stupid and I’d still look after you, Isabel._

Goddamnit. God-fucking-damnit. If thinking about words if going to lead him here, then he won’t think about them. He doesn’t want to slip back into that hazy un-being again, the place where he became a Thing that eats and shits and fights on cue. The hard numbness he’d felt after they’d died, for months after they’d died. Whatever it was inside him that kept him glued to the floor of his mother’s room, waiting to die. Whatever it is that had set upon him when Kenny left, the desolation.

So. There is something else worth having, he thinks.

Erwin helped. He doesn’t know if he meant to help, but he did. Having the words to focus on meant something to him. First, there were the lessons. Then, there was – the other thing. Levi’s not a prude. He likes being fucked. Having someone else’s hands on him, being appreciated.

There are probably other things, too. Erwin is –

He’s interesting, if Levi’s being honest. Not just because he tells Levi things he’s never heard before, tickles some long hidden part of his brain that enjoys learning, and knowing, but because he’s – confusing. Not quite an enigma; he wears his purpose on his sleeve, for the good of humanity and everything that includes. But Levi isn’t stupid. He doesn’t believe that there are people who exist only for the good of others, who don’t want anything of their own. Maybe it’s acclaim, or money, or a legacy, or power – Erwin will want something. Levi just hasn’t got him figured yet. And maybe he never will, now that he’s gone and screwed up the lessons by threatening to kill him.

He had meant it, but he hadn’t meant it _urgently,_ and how stupid does that sound? As if you can say to a person, ‘one day I will end you’, and expect them to reply, ‘well that’s okay, then, so long as it’s not this side of the new year’. He doesn’t know how to explain his instinct, it’s not scientific, it’s not even based on anything, just a prickle at the back of his neck, a pull in the gut.

Levi’s never really – been good at people. Erwin isn’t an exception. Like the reading, it was a lost cause – Kenny tried to show him, considered it important to survival, at least. But Levi’s always been too sullen, too quiet, too angry. Too short, too sadistic. _You have that silly whore to blame for that, Tombstone,_ Kenny would mock. _Brats aren’t meant to grow up in locked rooms. Would it kill you to crack a smile?_

Levi wonders what Erwin really sees in him, other than his skill. He could have anyone he wanted, tall and broad, blond hair, blue eyes, soft skin and soft hair. Clean fingernails.

He supposes he’s just convenient.

So he figures he’s a convenience Erwin isn’t quite willing to give up yet when he arrives back at headquarters at leads his horse into the stable, Erwin sitting on a barrel propped up against a stall, legs crossed and large nose stuck in a book. He stands, hastily, when Levi enters. “You’re back,” he says, like he was expecting it, or as if Levi had _asked_ him to wait all morning with the horses.

“Are you stalking me now?” Levi asks flatly.

“You’re always here. I wouldn’t have to stalk you to know that.”

Levi leads his horse into her pen. He decides to ignore him, brushing down her mane, releasing her tack and draping it across the stall. When Erwin realises he’s not going to say anything, he speaks:

“We shouldn’t have been doing what we were doing,” he says, stiffly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Levi tries to figure if he feels hurt. He chooses not to take it personally. He did threaten to kill the man, in fairness. “Fine,” he replies, bluntly.

But Erwin doesn’t know when to shut up. “I – lose my sense, around you,” he tells him, like that’s Levi’s fault. “I do things I shouldn’t. I say things I shouldn’t.”

Levi shuts the bolt on his horse’s stall, leans back against the pillar. “What do you want me to do about that?” He asks, and he thinks it disarms him, slightly.

“Nothing,” Erwin says. “I’m just – telling you why. We shouldn’t do this, anymore.”

Levi scuffs his foot against the hay-covered floor. No, he’s not hurt. More irritated, than anything else. He liked the fucking, and the pillow talk. Erwin has good pillow talk. Among other things; yeah, there are _other_ things he’s good at, too, although Levi spends a lot of time trying not to think about them in the daylight.

“Is this about your office?” Levi doesn’t do obfuscation. “Sorry,” he says bluntly, “I’m not a lapdog.”

“You hate me.”

Levi doesn’t answer straight away. “Why does it matter?” He asks, folding his arms. “Do you need me to like you for what we do? You can pretend, can’t you?”

“I wasn’t thinking about undying declarations of love,” Erwin says, dryly, “I was more concerned about your hatred and what that might mean for my life span.”

Levi resists the urge to roll his eyes. He finds this entire conversation incredibly self-indulgent and more than a little tragic. “Erwin,” he tells him, pitiably, “you really don’t understand how good I am at killing. If I wanted you dead immediately, you’d be dead. You wouldn’t even see it coming.”

Erwin has a look on his face like – what is that, exactly? Confusion sounds too simple; there’s a lot of irritation there, too. “Levi, what do you get out of this?”

“Of this?” Levi gestures to the stables, deliberately misunderstanding.

“Of us.”

“ _Us?”_ He scoffs. It almost makes him want to laugh. “Don’t be pathetic, Captain, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Erwin asks him, directly. “Do you think if we – do things, together, you will win my favour? Gain a boon?”

“What the fuck is a boon?”

“An advantage. Some kind of benefit.”

Yes, actually. A warm body, strong arms, clever, thick fingers. That’s Levi’s boon. That, and the little oversights Erwin is willing to indulge; visiting his horse at night, taking tea from the officer’s lounge, training by himself instead of with eager and terrified recruits. “Sure,” Levi admits, easily, “but I figured it was a mutual benefit, no?”

“Can it be mutual?” Erwin asks him, seriously. His ugly thick brows are all tangled on his head, brow creased with genuine concern. “In our circumstances, I mean. Even if you weren’t… here, for the reason you are. I’m your superior officer. If anyone were to find out – “

“Mike suspects,” Levi interrupts.

“I know he suspects,” Erwin snaps. “I’m not talking about Mike. Shadis. Worse than Shadis – these kinds of affairs don’t stay secret for long, they go all the way to the top. It would ruin me. It would make a laughing-stock out of you.”

“I’m a whoreson, Erwin. I don’t often care what people think of me.” A beat; he frowns at himself. “Not that I’m particularly invested in what we were doing, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Erwin agrees, like he’s pretending to take Levi at face value. He’s probably thinking about all the times Levi’s come with his thighs trembling around his head. Erwin doesn’t know it, but his eyes go a little lazy when he’s thinking about sex. Levi has noticed.

“What are you reading?” Levi knows he’s interrupting Erwin’s thoughts.

Erwin frowns, looks down in the book in his hand with vague embarrassment. “It’s nothing. It’s – fiction, actually. Sometimes I like to… pretend, I suppose.” He runs his fingers along the spine.

Levi holds out his hand, despite himself. If Erwin is surprised, he doesn’t show it, wordlessly passing the book to him.

He squints his eyes at the title. _A Life Beyond._ He wrinkles his nose. “A life beyond what?” He asks, irritated.

Erwin is smiling, slightly. “It’s metaphorical,” he says, gently. “It’s about life beyond the walls, but also about death.”

“Ah,” Levi sighs, like he knows what that means, “that’s probably how it got past the censors, huh? If it’s about how leaving the walls means dying, I mean.”

“Probably,” Erwin agrees, like he’s pleased with Levi’s insight.

“I like the lessons,” Levi says, then. He passes the book back to Erwin, watches him place it gently on his barrel. “I want to read.”

“I see,” Erwin says, quietly.

“We don’t have to fuck,” Levi tells him, bluntly. “I just want to learn. And you’re – “ his next words are said from behind gritted teeth, “ – a good teacher.”

Erwin raises his brows. “Am I?” He asks.

“Sure. Trust me – I’ve had bad ones.” He can see Kenny laughing at him, covered in filth, because he didn’t make the jump from one roof to the next. He’d hit the ground so hard and so fast. He’d only been with Kenny a week at most; he wasn’t strong enough to pull himself up onto the ledge. “You’re patient. And I know I’m not the most…” he’s not stupid, he knows. But he doesn’t find letters easy. “Willing, student.”

“Thank you, Levi,” Erwin says softly, “that’s a very kind thing to say.”

“Ugh.” Levi rolls his eyes, folds his arms. He hates when Erwin talks to him that way, like he’s a child who’s done something well.

“You understand, though,” Erwin is saying, carefully. “I don’t think properly around you. I find you very – distracting, Levi.”

Levi nearly flinches. Oh. He had thought – Erwin would be scared of him, maybe, or was just worried about repercussions. He’s surprised to find it actually _does_ hurt to be told he’s a distraction, an irritating interference in Erwin’s everyday life. “I see,” Levi mutters, stiffly. He grips his forearms with nails.

“When you’re with me,” Erwin continues, sounding puzzled, “I don’t… act the way I should. I tell you things I shouldn’t. Like – like dinosaurs,” he says. “I should know better by now, how dangerous, how stupid it is, to spread that kind of information. It puts me at risk, but – it puts you at risk, too. And you’re already on thin ice, I know.”

Levi frowns. “I don’t follow,” he says, honestly.

“You’re too – “ Erwin sounds frustrated with himself, because he’s using his hands to gesticulate, mussing his carefully parted hair, “you’re like a – you draw me, to you. I know this is wrong, because you hate me, and because you’re my subordinate, and even without those things, I’m a soldier, who can’t – who shouldn’t – “

Levi stares at him, blankly.

“ – form attachments,” Erwin finishes, lamely. “Especially when they aren’t reciprocated. It’s trouble for everyone. You especially.”

Ah. That’s better, then. Than being a distraction. Levi almost wants to laugh. “Don’t lie,” he says, carelessly.

“I’m not lying,” Erwin tells him, irritated.

“Erwin,” Levi drawls, “you’re selfish. If you want me badly enough, you’ll have me. Fuck what that means for me.”

Erwin fixes his jaw. Levi likes this look in his eyes more than the others – this shrewdness, intensity, maybe even anger, like he’s been caught out. “Yes,” Erwin agrees. “I’m trying to do you a favour.”

Levi sighs, pushing off his post. He moves, almost in one fluid motion, to tip himself against Erwin’s stall; one hand braced on the wood beneath his back. He’s not crowding him, not really – a man his size could never crowd a man shaped like Erwin, who has pressed his hands behind hips, like if he pins them there, he can stop them from grabbing Levi of their own volition.

“I really don’t need you to do me favours,” Levi tells him, intently. This close, he has to lift his chin to meet his eyes, look up at him. “I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Erwin says, calmly. A little too calm, in Levi’s opinion. Too forced.

Levi presses closer. His chest rests against Erwin’s lower ribs. “Well?” Levi asks him, pointedly.

Erwin swallows. “Well what?” Levi can smell his cologne – rose-scented, irritating, and his hair pomade. He likes the pomade. It’s Erwin’s smell, in his mind; as thick and waxy and firm as the man himself.

“Are you going to be selfish?” Levi enquires. He presses his palm between Erwin’s legs, and nothing more. His shoulders ripple, inhaling sharply through his nose. He’s already half-way there, has probably been hardening as Levi talked, thinking about all the ways he likes to use his body. “Poor Erwin,” Levi mocks, saccharine, “pretending to have morals, worrying about his – “ he searches for the word, “ – _dainty_ little subordinate.”

Levi squeezes, and Erwin knocks his head back against the wood. “It’s not like that,” he lies, through his teeth.

“It must be so hard for you,” he taunts, “having me right here, and just being so honourable, so _noble,_ that you can’t touch me back.”

“You threatened to kill me,” Erwin hisses, but his hips are jerking forward.

“Don’t lie,” Levi teases, “that just makes it all the dirtier, doesn’t it?” He unhooks the button of Erwin’s uniform pants with his thumb, deftly, slips his hand beneath the fabric. He’s hot, and twitching under his bare palm.

Erwin curls his fingers in his own hair, twists. “I don’t understand what you want,” he breathes, rolling himself against Levi’s hand.

Levi pulls back. He spits in his palm, and pushes back in, gripping Erwin at his base. He’s so large, and Levi’s fingers so thin. “Let me prove how mutual this is,” he tells him, slowly, surely, working his cock. Erwin curses under his breath. He braces his free hand against the stable door, sends it rattling.

“They’ll – someone will – “ he’s half-protesting, but he’s fucking himself forward, his cheeks flushing, lashes lowered. _Goddamn,_ Levi thinks, _he’s perfect._ Erwin is spreading his thighs, squatting slightly, to better thrust against Levi’s hand. “Find us,” he chatters out, and then has to bite his lip, like he can no longer trust his mouth to make the right noises.

“Feel free to leave,” Levi tells him, slightly breathless. He wants to tear Erwin’s shirt off his back. He wants to press his lips to one of those pink, perfect nipples. He wants to drop to his knees and take him down his throat, have him push Levi over the barrel and take him like that, like it means nothing. He wants someone to find their perfect Captain, cheeks red and rutting against Levi like an animal, tearing at his own hair, one fist stuffed in his mouth.

The perfect Captain comes into Levi’s hand. He does _him_ a favour; he catches most of it, doesn’t leave him to soak his pants like a teenager. He wipes down his palm in a hay bale, scrapes sticky straws of hay off his palm on the stable door. “I’ve never seen a guy come so much, you know that?” Levi tells him, irritated.

Erwin doesn’t reply, head tipped back against the post and trembling, slightly, trying to gather his thoughts. “Yeah,” he says, stupidly, eventually. “Sorry about that.”

Levi brushes down the rest on the hem of his cloak. He tries not to feel smug.

Erwin tucks himself back in his pants, fingers all fumbling, uncoordinated. “You hard?” He asks, distracted.

 _So romantic,_ Levi thinks. “Yeah,” he admits.

“C’mon then,” Erwin tells him, his words slightly mashed together. He grips Levi’s shirt and pulls him out into the sunshine, round the back of the stables, facing the empty paddock, and then the forest. His fears were unfounded – they are, predictably, the only people spending their Saturday morning with horses. It’s almost a reward, the novelty of it, Erwin on his knees, pressing Levi up against the stable wall. The logistics don’t quite work – Erwin has to hunch, Levi leaning up on his toes, but when he comes it’s satisfying, satiating. His hand alone in the showers, thinking about Erwin’s thighs, isn’t quite the same.

After finishing, Levi watches Erwin roll his tongue around his mouth, like he’s picking his teeth. He brushes his thumb neatly against the corner of his mouth to wipe away any errant strands of Levi on his skin. “Am I clear?” He asks.

Levi nods, still slightly breathless. “Me?” He asks.

“Neat as ever,” Erwin tells him.

“Fine. Good.” Levi’s knees are weak, anyway; it’s easy to let himself sink down onto the grass, rest his head on his shoulder. “Thanks. For getting me back.”

Erwin nods, dumbly. He looks stupid, sitting with his legs folded beneath him, all long limbs clumsily assembled. He’s reaching into his pockets for his cigarettes and matches.

Levi groans, irritated. “No,” he orders. He plucks Erwin’s cigarette from between his fingers, throws it on the ground, and grinds it beneath his heel. “It’s disgusting.”

Erwin gapes at him. “You’re insufferable,” he says, like he’s only just realising.

“It makes me cough,” Levi tells him. “I don’t give a shit what you do in your own time but if you’re going to come inside me, you keep that shit away from me, you hear?”

“Is a man not allowed simple pleasures?” Erwin protests.

“You’re a damn addict,” Levi snaps. “Cigarettes, that shitty scotch Hange keeps buying.” _Me,_ he almost adds, and doesn’t. “It’s not attractive,” he says, stoutly.

“Isn’t it?” Erwin raises one eyebrow. “Ah. I see. Maybe I can curb myself, just a little.”

Levi feels his lips twitch. For the first time in a long time, he has to actively repress a smile – not a big smile, just a curve of the mouth, but Erwin will consider it a win and he doesn’t want that.

“I actually didn’t come here to for sex,” Erwin says, and something about the way he says is so plainly sends a shiver down Levi’s spine.

“No?” Levi asks, lazily, letting one of his knees fall open. “You mean you didn’t stake out the stable for three hours on the off-chance I give you an angry handjob?”

Erwin is smiling. “You really are very funny, Levi.”

He’s not. He’s sarcastic, and cruel, but if Erwin wants to find that funny that’s his choice. “So why did you come here, then?”

Erwin looks out across the field. His hair is lifted, slightly, by the light breeze. His pressed white sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, the only concession to an otherwise perfect uniform. “I wanted to – ask your permission for something,” he says, then sighs. “No, actually. I’m lying to you. I wasn’t planning on asking for permission, more the courtesy of letting you know.”

Levi doesn’t say anything, but he is listening, eyes hooded, head tipped back against the wall.

“I want to use your intel on Morely,” Erwin says, calmly, clearly. Like this, when he’s plotting, and scheming, the slightly nervy, fumbling man is dead. “I plan to blackmail him,” he continues, like that’s an easy thing, “and in doing so, ensure that our funding remains untouched.”

Levi shuts his eyes. It’s not just Erwin who lets his lips get loose around Levi, tells him things he shouldn’t; Levi should _never_ have told Erwin about the night jobs, or Furlan.

“Mmm,” Levi says, quietly. “But you’re not asking for permission.”

“No,” Erwin says, regretfully.

Levi exhales through his nose. “I – “ he starts, then stops, reassesses. “I like living here, Erwin. Above the ground. I like that I can buy things with real money. And that I don’t have to always be looking over my shoulder.” He opens his eyes. “People aren’t as stupid as you give them credit for. Eventually, people will want to know where you’re getting your information. There’s a good chance someone puts two and two together, remembers that there was thug who used to work their parties, and that Captain Erwin has recently taken one into the Survey Corps.”

“Indeed,” Erwin agrees, “that is a risk. A gamble, even.”

“It’s my life you’re gambling,” Levi tells him, lightly.

“I send you out past the walls and trust that you’ll survive. This… isn’t so different,” Erwin says, carefully.

“No,” Levi agrees, “I suppose it isn’t.” He pauses, collects his thoughts. “So all that talk back there – what was it? Guilt?”

“I suppose – I suppose there’s a part of me…”

Erwin trails off.

“A part of you?” Levi presses. “Go on. Follow the thought through, coward.”

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be selfish, when you’re involved,” Erwin says, softly. “You’re right. Maybe it’s guilt. I feel like I’ve taken a lot from you already, Levi. It bothers me that I know I’ll continue to take, that I’ll have to ask things of you which – I wouldn’t ask someone else, in your position.”

“My position?” Levi asks, confused.

“Relative to me,” Erwin explains, which explains nothing.

“Yeah,” Levi says, uncertainly. “Well, you’re not asking for permission, but – “ he sighs, waves a hand. “Do it, however it is you do it. I hate them all,” he tells him, with a sickening glee in his chest, “no skin off my back if someone decides to finally do something about it.”

Erwin is smiling now, really smiling. “Here’s a thing,” he says, and he sounds like he’s about to launch into a lesson, “you’re the only other person who’s ever said that to my face. Honestly, I mean.”

“That I hate rich people?” It’s a fairly common sentiment where Levi comes from.

“Not just ‘rich’ people, Levi.” Erwin leans in, conspiratorial. “All of them. The Interior. Parliament.” He lowers his voice. “The King.”

“I despise them,” Levi agrees, and he doesn’t even need to explain why.

“You know, we have more in common than we have in difference,” Erwin tells him.

Levi almost laughs. “You have a weird sense of humor,” he snorts. “Knew a guy like you. Used to laugh at his own jokes too much.”

“It’s not a joke. It’s the truth. There are the people who run our world, and the rest of us. It doesn’t matter where we come from.”

“Like the people who killed your father,” Levi suggests.

Erwin lifts his chin. “What about it?” He asks defiantly, and Levi is – well, the truth is, Levi is almost relieved. Erwin isn’t a god. He’s not so calculating, cold and committed, that he’s working only for the betterment of humanity. No, because that would be unnatural. Erwin is _human._ Someone killed his father and so he will kill them. Kill them all, if that’s what it takes, to end the regime that caused it.

“Ah,” Levi says lightly. “I see. That’s nice, actually. It’s ordinary. You want revenge.”

“Not revenge.” Erwin’s eyes are alight. “I want to peel them from existence, every single person who was complicit in it. Not dad’s death – the ugly, stupid cause of it. A singular lack of imagination. They killed him for thinking, Levi, for daring to _question._ How do we move forward if we can’t even talk about our past?”

“Sounds like someone does want us moving forward,” Levi says, casually.

“ _Exactly,”_ Erwin presses. “But you and I – we have this together, you understand that, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” Levi mutters, unconvinced.

“Levi,” Erwin barks, sharply. “What do you want more than anything in this world?”

 _Here we go again,_ Levi thinks, tiredly. “I don’t know,” he sighs, “a gold-plated urinal, maybe.”

“Levi,” Erwin says again.

He brushes his hand over his face. What is this in Erwin, this constant – pushing, and prodding. It’s not unfamiliar, Levi realises. It’s the way Kenny would talk to him. _What do you do?_ He’d ask him, sizing up a mark. _How you gonna fix this?_ Levi had hated it then, he hates it now. Maybe it’s the unique mix of being talked down to and asked a question he doesn’t know the answer to. It stresses him out. “You would make a good serial killer, you know that? No reason, you just remind me of one I knew.”

“Be serious.”

Levi shuts his eyes and wonders why he’s putting up with this. Maybe Erwin’s right. They shouldn’t be doing this. Levi should just kill him, right? It would fix at least six of his seven problems. “I told you already,” he says, keeping his voice flat. “I don’t have any dreams. Not anymore.”

“I’m not asking for your dreams. I’m asking what you want.”

“What I want,” Levi starts, sourly. “That’s never bothered you before, why start now?” He tears errantly at some grass, lets it scatter out of his fingers. “I’ll tell you what I want,” he says, sharply, “I want to make it so – so kids don’t go hungry. There,” Levi finishes, shortly. “That’s what I want.”

Perhaps Erwin did not expect this. “What?” He asks, caught off-guard.

“Are you deaf? That’s what I want. If I have to pick something, I mean, that’s what I’d pick.”

“I see.” Levi is certain he’s caught Erwin off-guard – he probably wanted to hear, _a roof over my head, power, money, food, land,_ or, if he has a slightly higher opinion of Levi than he’s let on, _freedom, justice, the world beyond the walls, truth._ Levi does not care for it, he doesn’t even really have time for it, all those lofty ideals. He can only control his own two hands. He can only fix what he can see. He’d like to see children with three meals a day, running in the sun, faces bruise-free and happy.

Not personally, obviously. He doesn’t _like_ children. He just thinks it would be –

Better.

“Is that because – “ Erwin starts.

“Don’t,” Levi shuts him down.

“But it’s not a dream,” Erwin continues.

“No. Dreams are for – “ for what, children? “Not for me,” he says.

“Well,” Erwin tells him, “I have a dream.”

And he tells him. He paints a picture in Levi’s head, of a world without walls, a world with universities, and free press, and a thing called democracy, where people vote for their king. He talks about – doctors that care for everyone, schools for every child, food shared adequately before the Interior hoards it. He talks and talks, until the sun slips into late afternoon, and a chill sets in the air.

Levi thinks about the boy in the town square. _Merchants bring them in like fleas,_ a woman had said. Levi remembers the slit of light in the closet he hid in, his mother’s sobs, the dirty room where they lived. The punches from a gang he wronged, Kenny’s laughs, mouldy bread.

It’s a nice dream, he decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based erwin introduces levi to class consciousness


	7. Chapter 7

Erwin doesn’t know what Mike knows. The other man is staring at him from across the table, eyes slightly narrowed, and even though isn’t obviously sniffing Erwin can recognise the look on his face, that careful consideration, like he’s privy to some kind of information no one else knows. It used to bother him, when they were younger – Mike would see things no one else could see, an instinct he could never really explain, until one day he’d finally laughed in that sheepish, shy way he’d had back then. _I smell things, Erwin._

He admitted that it was a gift he liked to keep to himself. He smells _everything,_ he confesses, including unsavoury things, _private_ things, which in a barracks made up of teenage boys was more for his sanity than anyone else’s. He told Erwin, when his father came home smelling like booze and hay, he’d ignored it. And when his mother smelt like turnips, the vegetable grown by the lonely farmer on the land beneath their forest, he’d kept that to himself, too. It’s Mike’s code, Erwin came to appreciate. He’ll never willingly share your secrets with others.

But by God, he’ll stew on them.

“Cheat,” Mike says to Erwin’s declaration that he’d placed down two kings. He’s right; Erwin had been trying to relieve himself of a jack and an ace.

“Clever,” Erwin tells him, and Mike grunts.

He scrapes the cards piled in the centre of the table into his deck, makes a big show of shuffling them. “Hange?” He prompts.

“Two kings,” Hange says, confidently. Mike frowns at them.

“I already said cheat,” he tells them, irritated. “I know you don’t have two kings.”

Hange shrugs. “So call me cheat, then.”

It’s impossible, playing cards with the pair of them, even though they’ve been doing this now going on seven years. Mike and Erwin at first, with other people, other friends. Gone now, of course. Hange has been the only constant at this table since they joined, some five years ago. The only person Erwin has been able to keep alive. Although – that doesn’t put enough respect on Hange’s name, really. Perhaps it makes sense that of all Erwin’s once-friends, now bones beneath dirt, it’s only the two people who can beat him at cards that are still breathing.

He checks the clock on his desk. Ten minutes past the hour. He thinks Levi should be back, by now. He had only applied for a two-day leave, and Erwin had no reason to deny it. He clears his throat. “Mike,” he says, “if you think Hange’s cheating, then you should say.”

“There’s no way you have two kings,” Mike scoffs. “You’re just bluffing.”

“Well alright,” Hange is saying, exasperated, “if I’m bluffing, call my bluff, idiot.”

Mike sniffs. Hange kicks him beneath the table. “Erwin,” they denounce, “Mike’s cheating again. Really cheating, I mean.”

“What, I’m not allowed to breathe?”

“You’re trying to smell if I’m lying – you know I don’t _like_ that, Mike. Erwin,” they demand, “tell him.”

“Mike,” Erwin tries.

“You’re going to bar me for breathing, but you don’t say shit when Hange counts the cards?” Mike says incredulously.

“Well we’re not playing blackjack, so Hange isn’t counting any cards.” Erwin tries to be reasonable, topping up each of their glasses with Hange’s whiskey.

“You always do this,” Mike mutters, his hair falling in front of his eyes, finger pointed in Hange’s direction. “Goddamn, you’re underhanded, you know that Hange?” It’s not said vindictively; there’s only fondness in Mike’s voice, and for some reason it makes Erwin’s stomach twist, that fondness, between friends. Just the three of them left, now. They used to have these meetings in Flagon’s office. Before that, in Vera’s – she was his first squad-leader. Irrepressible, fearless. And she’d been crushed underfoot, like a bug.

He quickly down his drink, pours himself another finger. He feels Mike’s eyes on him, sharp. “Erwin,” he says, and to someone else it might sound warning, but Erwin knows that’s how Mike shows concern. He’ll probably be able to smell it on him, whatever it is Erwin is feeling – panic, or sickness in his chest. It’s fine, it’s normal. He waves a hand, glass lifted to his lips, and behind his slight drunkness resists the urge to say: _do you feel ghosts in my office, tonight?_ He might have asked them, once. He misses that. Being so inconsequential that he could sleep at the foot of Mike’s bed when the worst of it got too bad.

Erwin winces, beats his chest with his fist. “Well?” He prompts. “Is Hange cheating or no, Mikey?”

 _Mikey._ Mike frowns at him, not unpleasantly. “Well, I don’t know, Ervy,” he replies, fingers twisting a card absently, “’cause I don’t know if I’m any good at reading people if I’m not allowed to sniff’em first.”

The door to Erwin’s office slams open. “You know,” Levi is saying, voice all irritated, face slightly pink like it’s been scrubbed raw, “one of these days I’m just gonna steal one of your keys, ‘cause I used to know a guy who could print them perfe – oh.” His hair is still wet from his bath and his left eye is swollen, purple and shiny. He blinks at the three of them, like he’s seeing them for the first time. “I see,” he says, neutrally. “I’ll come back later.”

 _Sorry,_ Erwin says, with a guilty look. In his defence, Levi is uncharacteristically late.

“Who fucked up your face?” Mike asks him, snidely, trying to hide his smile.

“Why, you want to send them flowers?” Levi sneers back.

“Levi,” Erwin tries, “what happened to your eye?”

“Obviously I got punched,” he says flatly. “Enjoy your game.”

He turns to leave. “Well – wait,” Erwin says, half-standing, “who punched you?” Levi’s too fast, usually – if it was a member of the Corps, Erwin wants to know why. If it wasn’t, he needs to know if there’s going to be trouble.

“Don’t worry,” Levi says, with turning around, “I got them back. And it’s no one you need to get your panties in a bunch over.”

Mike bristles. “Hey,” he says, “this is your Captain. You going to speak to him like that?” He turns to Erwin. “You going to _let_ him speak to you like that?”

“Haven’t you got the side of a lamppost to be sniffing or something, you lanky creep?” Levi spits at him.

“Why don’t you tell me, you’re closer to the ground,” Mike shoots back.

Erwin shakes his head. “The two of you,” he says, “need to grow up. And absolutely not, Mike,” he says, “Levi, as punishment, I demand you come here and join our game.”

Hange gives a squeal of delight. “Yes!” They say, “C’mon, Levi. It’ll be fun.”

“Fun,” Levi repeats, like he can imagine nothing worse.

“Fun?” Mike replies dubiously, looking at Erwin from the side of his eyes.

Erwin kicks out the empty seat across from him. “Sit,” he says, simply.

“Sit,” Levi responds, like he’s puzzling the order.

“Sit?” Mike mutters, aghast.

“Sorry, are we playing echo?” Hange interrupts. “Yes, _sit,_ Levi, sit.” They pat the seat next to them. “C’mon. You know how to play cheat, don’t you?”

And Erwin smiles, aware how stupid it is to feel contented, but feeling it anyway. It’s been a while since their games have grown by one. He and Levi have played cards before, of course; the man is inscrutable, has an unbeatable poker face that makes him impossible to read, and matches up well with Hange’s impossible logic and Mike’s special talent for sniffing out lies. Erwin finds he keeps losing, but that’s okay – he’s nowhere near as competitive as people think he is when he’s among friends.

Although he can feel Mike’s eyes, again. He tries not to let it bother him, topping himself up while Levi unenthusiastically calls cheat on Mike’s bluff. Mike leans across the table to snatch up the cards tossed in the middle, and isn’t even subtle about leaning forward to sniff him. “Are you sick?” He asks, suspiciously.

“Are you stupid?” Levi replies. “Your go, Erwin,” he mutters.

But Mike’s eyes are narrowed, hardened. “You smell worse than usual,” he says.

“You look uglier,” Levi rebukes, but there isn’t really any snap in in. He frowns, looks up. “What do I normally smell like?” He seems to ask, despite himself.

Mike seems to alight on his answer. “You’ve been Underground,” he accuses, “that’s what it is. You smell like a criminal.” He sniffs again. “A criminal who’s been in a fight,” he adds, “with alcohol,” and with one final sniff, he frowns. “Since when do you wear rose cologne?”

Levi’s eyes widen so imperceptibly to the ordinary person it would look like his face hasn’t changed at all. His eyes meet Erwin’s, briefly. And so do Mike’s, trailing across the table like a hound picking up scent on a hunt. Erwin clears his throat. There is no hiding anything from Mike, not ever. He can sense Erwin’s lies, his fears, even his follies.

“How’d you know I don’t have a sweetheart down there?” Levi covers, carefully, gracefully. He rearranges his deck, pointedly.

Mike doesn’t answer. Erwin knows: Mike would be able to tell if Levi had been with a woman. He can feel his eyes boring holes into the side of his head, feels his judgement, worse than before. He tells himself, Mike doesn’t have to know. There are a thousand reasons Levi could smell like Erwin, still smells faintly of his cologne.

“Who’s go is it anyway?” Erwin distracts, stupidly.

“Does your sweetheart use a lot of wax in their hair?” Mike asks, innocently. He’s usually so steadfast, methodical. It’s not like him to be underhand – not unless he’s angry.

“No, but I do,” Levi replies. “In fact, Erwin lets me use his, don’t you?”

Erwin clears his throat. “Only sometimes,” he says, squinting at his deck, rearranging his cards.

“I see,” Mike says, stiffly. The silence is strung out, tense, awkward.

“Guys?” Hange asks. “Are we going to play, or – “

Shadis interrupts, then, blessedly, thankfully. His hair is wet with rain and he smells like horse. “Ah,” he says, “I thought I’d find you here,” he tells them, and then wordlessly snatches Hange’s whiskey off the table, necks it straight from the bottle.

Levi raises his eyebrows. Mike very pointedly doesn’t sniff. Erwin pretends that their Commander stealing alcohol from out under their noses and drinking it straight from the bottle isn’t an abnormal occurrence. And only Hange, sweet, misjudged Hange, has the balls to say anything about it.

“Are you alright, Commander?” They ask with stars in their eyes.

“No,” Shadis grunts, eyes streaming. He thwacks his chest twice with his fist as if to urge down the burning he’s no doubt feeling. “No, I’m not, thank you Hange for asking.”

Erwin feels remiss for not saluting, but Shadis seems remarkably unbothered, apparently preferring to pretend he’s not an officer. “Sir,” he nods at him, not wanting to discuss business here but curiosity getting the better of him, “Morely?”

Shadis waves his hand. “Oh, you must be so very convincing, Erwin,” he says, with only a touch of resentment. “He’s promised his full support when the council votes.”

Erwin frowns. “But they haven’t voted yet? Why not?”

Shadis makes a noise that sounds like disgust. “You know,” he says, “I think I prefer the titans.”

“That bad?” Mike asks.

“We’ll have to delay the next expedition,” Shadis announces. “Although – you’ll keep this to yourselves, for the time being.” His eyes briefly cast over Levi, but if he’s bothered by his presence in his inner circle, he doesn’t mention it. “They’re rerouting funds for some kind of – wagon strike,” he says, incredulously. “If you can believe it. Workers striking in Maria, want to be payed the Sina wage, but if they’re not transporting the crop…” Shadis sighs. “Well anyway,” he rejoins, “it’s not our problem now.”

“Where’s affected?” Hange asks.

“So far, just the Underground.” Shadis rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “But,” he continues, “if someone doesn’t step in, the discontent will grow. Shortages from Sina to Shiganshina.”

“Well so long as it’s just the Underground,” Levi says, calmly, “that’s okay, then.”

A sticky, awkward silence. Erwin watches Levi carefully from over his cards. He doesn’t seem angry. He’s just rearranging his deck, as if he hasn’t realised the effect of his words. Which he has. Because he wouldn’t have said them if he didn’t.

Shadis is prickly. “That wasn’t my meaning,” he says, which is not – Erwin notes – an apology. When Levi ignores him, he continues: “I wasn’t thinking of anything, or anyone,” he adds, pointedly.

“No,” Levi agrees, “you weren’t. People like you don’t.”

Shadis’s eyes widen, then narrow. “What did you just say to me?”

Erwin forgets, of course, behind the drinking and the failures, that Shadis was once the best of the best. He has a pride unmatched by any man Erwin has ever met – arguably undeserved, but still. A sharp temper. And he’s particularly good with his fists.

Levi is still looking at his cards with a distinct bored look on his face. “I said, people like you don’t. In response to you saying that you weren’t thinking.”

Shadis wraps his fingers around the back of Hange’s chair. His knuckles crack. “And what do you mean by that, precisely?”

“Levi,” Erwin says, quietly.

Levi looks at him sharply, as if annoyed, but Erwin just lightly shakes his head.

He puts down his cards. “Apologies, Commander,” he says. “In my experience most people forget that there’s a city beneath Mitras. That’s all I meant by it.”

The silence remains. Shadis lifts his chin, slightly. _Go on,_ he seems to be saying. Erwin hides his wince; he reckons, you can just about get the apology out of Levi, but anything else is going to be a hard sell. There’s a risk Shadis is going to flare his temper, and if Levi gets angry – really angry – it will be a real problem. He gently picks up his foot beneath the table and braces it, purposefully, against Levi’s knee.

“I’ve been down there,” Levi continues. “I just got back. It’s fresh in my mind. Which is why I stepped out of line.”

Shadis doesn’t soften but he does relent. He nods, once, brusquely. “Very well,” he says. “What you do with your own time is your business, but I don’t want to hear about any illegal happenings, understand me? If you give the police any reason to come sniffing – “

He sees Levi’s shoulder’s tense, his hands curling into fists. He presses against his knee warningly. And Levi’s eye twitches. “I won’t,” he replies, like it physically pains him.

“Good,” Shadis says, shortly. He nods at Erwin. “We’ll discuss it later,” he tells him, and leaves.

If looks could kill. Levi is glaring at his back as he walks away, fists clenched on the table-top. Erwin carefully lifts his boot of off his knee.

“What were you doing Underground, Levi?” Hange breaks the silence with their typical curiosity and lack of tact.

Levi flicks his eyes towards them. There’s a beat, and then he answers. “Helping,” he says, whatever that means.

“Oh,” Hange continues, “that’s nice of you. How were you helping?”

“Hange,” Erwin tries, but whatever spell he can cast over Levi does not work on them.

“I have a wage, don’t I?” Levi answers bluntly, picking up his cards. “Might as well use it for something.”

“Were you giving people money?”

“Food.”

“Is it really bad down there?” And Hange sounds genuinely upset. Erwin knows they will be – they’re caring to a fault, overly sympathetic to make up for the lack of empathy. “I’m sorry,” she continues, “I can’t even imagine what it’s like living in a place without the sun. No wonder you’re so small.”

Levi stands, violently, smacking his fist into his cards. “You think that’s funny?” He demands, and he’s as furious as Erwin has ever seen him, that same look in his eyes as the first time he knelt before him, or that first time, in Erwin’s office. “Why don’t you say that to their faces you four-eyed freak?”

“Hange’s being _nice,_ you fucking feral,” Mike snarls.

“He’s not a feral,” Erwin interjects, “I’ve told you not to use that word!”

Mike’s eyes bulge. “You’re on his side?!” He demands, “It’s Hange!”

“I’m not a damsel, Mike,” Hange interrupts. “It’s okay, Levi. I’m always putting my foot in it. I don’t have a good read on people all the time. I just think it’s really good of you to try and help people. We can all only do a small part, but it says a lot about you that you’re willing to do yours.”

Levi blinks at them, clearly disarmed. “Oh,” he says. He slowly sits back down. “I just – I thought you were making fun of me,” he says. “You people – “ the tips of his ears are red; he’s speaking as plainly and without pretence as Erwin has ever heard him, “ – I mean, some people, treat us like dirt. Because of where we come from.”

Mike tsks, folds his arms. “It’s not where you come from,” he mutters, “it’s what you do. What you did.”

“Do you think I enjoyed it?” Levi asks him.

“I don’t know,” Mike shoots back, “I hope not. I like to think you didn’t.”

“But if I didn’t enjoy it, why did I do it?”

Mike leans back in his chair and regards Levi from the top of his nose. “I don’t know,” he says, enunciating each word. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Erwin watches Levi’s face. He meets his eyes, slightly hostile and slightly confused, like he doesn’t know how to answer. _So?_ Erwin is says with his eyes, _Tell him._

Levi presses his lips together. “This shit – it isn’t new,” he mutters.

“What shit?” Hange asks, folding their hands in front of them, leaning forward, expectantly.

His words are drawn from him like pulling blood from a stone. He speaks as if every sentence, every morsel of information, is being stolen from him through torture. “The strikes. The protests, and the starving. It’s not new.” Levi’s face is sour. “We don’t – they can’t, I mean. Grow anything. People mostly live off grain and dried meat, if they’re lucky.” He snorts, humourlessly, listlessly. “I was lucky,” he says, and he’s looking directly at Mike, “because I made myself lucky. I fought for what I had. You can get pretty rich down there if you’re willing to put in the work.”

“The work,” Mike clarifies.

Levi shrugs a shoulder. “Whatever you can do. Yeah, I stole. I killed people. Some of them were probably innocent,” he adds, with a sickening intensity. “Some of them were probably just as desperate as I was. But I got lucky, and they didn’t.”

“If you had money,” Mike says with revulsion, “why didn’t you buy your way out?”

There’s no way to explain the look on Levi’s face except like this: as if he’s so shocked by Mike’s naivety, he can’t work up disgust. “Because they raise the tax, Mike,” he tells him, incredulously. “No one gets out. Never. Sometimes you hear stories – like me, I guess. And it makes you think you can do it too. So people don’t storm the stairs, and the walls have a place to dump their cast-offs, and all you sick fucks have a place to do whatever the fuck you want with us before you go back Above, and forget we exist.”

“I would rather die than murder an innocent person,” Mike tells him. His voice is quiet but you can’t mistake the loathing. “I’d rather starve.”

“Have you?” Levi asks. His words are dripping from his mouth. “Have you ever starved?”

Mike narrows his eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about me,” he says.

Levi doesn’t reply at first, and Erwin wonders if this has gone too far. He tries to catch his eye, but he’s preoccupied with the cards on the table, turning them over one by one. Whatever he sees in them makes him sigh. He picks up his leg and holds it to his chest, rests his chin on his knee. “Yeah, well it’s not new,” he says again. “Children are going to die tonight because some fat fuck doesn’t want to pay his workers a fair wage. By the time the right palms get greased, they’ll already be piling the corpses in the sewage.”

“I didn’t say – that’s wrong,” Mike tells him. “Don’t you put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that was right.” His accent comes out when he’s angry, Erwin thinks. Guttural and thick with rounded words.

“When I was a kid,” Levi starts, “two lords had some kinda – dispute.” He spits the word. “A pissing match. Who owns what part of such-and-such land, or whatever. A boundary disagreement, basically. They couldn’t get it worked out so the Crown confiscated all the grain until they could. But that meant the walls would be missing grain, so they gave you the grain that was supposed to go Underground.”

“Which lords?” Hange asks.

Levi shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know, how the hell should I know? I’m just the bastard who lived it, not like I have a say.” He sniffs slightly, looks at his nail beds. “Crown didn’t think anything of it, because who cares if scum dies. They probably wanted us to,” he adds, darkly.

Erwin watches Mike’s face. What Levi has just said is open treason, of course, but Mike’s not a bootlicker. He’s stubborn, with a sense of injustice heavier than a titan, but he’s not a snitch.

“I don’t think I’d starved yet,” Levi continues, with a vague, dazed look in his eyes. His brows are pulled together like he’s trying to work something out. “I remember – it hit me so hard, there’s no way I grew up that way. Does that make sense?” He asks them, looking up. “Kids who have never known anything but starvation don’t fight it. They just lie down and die, trust me. I gave my mother hell. Tch,” he mutters, “wailing like that. She was trying her best.”

Despite himself, Erwin is thinking of home. There were days mother wouldn’t cook, couldn’t bring herself to, he supposes, although he’s never known why. He would leave with his father in the morning and when they’d return, she’d still be lying on her side in their bed, hair unwashed, stagnant. It made him want to shake her, even then. He’s never been naive about how charmed his life was – there were beggars in the street, children with knees too large for their bodies, and even as a child he knew that what he had, a mother, a father, a warm home on good land, was better than how most people lived.

So he had always resented his mother, is the truth, because if even he could see how lucky they were, he didn’t understand why she didn’t, either. And he thinks of Levi’s mother, a woman he has never spoken about except in a desperate kind of anger, like it’s accidentally slipped out of his mouth, and how even though she had nothing, she fought with everything to let her child eat. Although perhaps that is a common thing, amongst mothers. Perhaps it is just Erwin’s mother who is unusual in that regard.

Levi is chewing absently on the inside of his cheek. “We boiled the mushrooms from under the bed,” he continues, vacantly. “She started taking payment in crusts of stale bread. Other people ate the rats,” he says, “but the rats carried sickness, and so next people were getting sick, too.”

“Is that how she died?” Erwin asks, gently.

Levi shakes his head. “No,” he says, “she lived for a couple years after that. But I think – “

He stops himself. Taps his nails against the tabletop.

“Levi,” Erwin prompts, quietly.

“If you haven’t starved,” Levi says without anger, just inevitability, “then you don’t know. I don’t mean gone hungry for a few days, or had to miss out on staples, I mean – picking through sewage with your bare hands to find what the people above you have tossed away, Mike. Parents killed their kids so they wouldn’t have to watch them die. Is that just enough for you? Is that good, or right? Okay, okay, I get it, if you were me you’d have just laid down and died, good for you.” Levi sounds tired. There’s no wrath in his words. “It was summer,” he mutters, “ _summer._ Who starves in the summer? It was _grain,_ we died because two men were fighting over a map, a piece of paper.”

Mike doesn’t say anything straight away. He takes a long drink, puts his empty mug down on the table. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That sounds shit,” he says, bluntly.

“I’m not looking for sympathy.” Levi drops his leg back onto the floor and folds his arms.

“I’m not giving you any. I don’t like you. It’s not because you’re from the Underground. I liked Furlan and Isabel. Didn’t care where they came from. I don’t like your attitude. I don’t like how easily you kill.”

“Fine,” Levi agrees. “I don’t like your inferiority complex and think your nose is freakish, how about that?”

“Fine,” Mike says, shortly. “And they didn’t give us the grain,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

Mike sets his jaw, stubbornly. “You said, earlier, that the crown gave us the grain that was supposed to go to you. But no one ever gave us anything. Where I’m from, you work for everything you have, or you go hungry. No one’s giving handouts to tree people,” he says, throwing his cards on the table. It’s a sore spot for Mike – as years go on, people forget, but Mike carries that prickly insecurity with him always.

“Well no one was giving me handouts, either,” Levi replies, defensively.

“Clearly,” Mike settles, “otherwise you wouldn’t be a runt.”

“Exactly,” Levi says. He slumps in his seat, slightly, presses his chin to his shoulder. “What I wouldn’t have given to grow up with trees,” he mutters, as if embarrassed, self-conscious. “They’re – they’re – unbelievable.” He sounds genuinely awed. “First time I heard about them I thought someone was making it up. Like – wood, that grows from the ground,” he snorts, “and taller than titans.”

Mike doesn’t know what to say to that, it seems. And neither does Erwin, or Hange – they just sit there, awkwardly. Until:

“There are trees in Maria,” Mike ventures, quietly. He’s picking aimlessly at his cards. “They’re the tallest I’ve ever seen. Three times, four times, the size of a 15-meter class, right Erwin?”

“Ancient,” Erwin agrees. “Huge. The tallest are far taller than the walls themselves.”

Levi looks at them both distrustfully, like he’s trying to decide if they’re mocking him. But then Hange speaks.

“At the college, they said if you cut down a tree, you could tell how old it was by the rings in its trunk,” they tell him, earnestly. “It’s not always accurate. But those trees,” they exhale, “oh my. I wonder what those trees have seen.”

“Seriously?” Levi asks them. “That old?”

“Erwin had this idea,” Mike explains, “he thought we could train in them.”

“Hey,” Hange interrupts, “you haven’t included my plan.”

Mike sighs. “Yeah, and Hange had this bright idea that we could let a couple of titans loose in the forest and use them for target practice.”

“It would be authentic!” They protest.

“Doesn’t matter,” Erwin tells Levi, “because it’s sort of like a – tourist attraction.” He spots the blank look in Levi’s eyes. “Wealthy people pay money to go and stay in cabins near the trees,” he explains. “For a vacation.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “Tch,” he mutters, and that’s all he says, to let them know what he thinks of that. But the air is easier, now. Mike and Levi don’t talk, not really, but they don’t rip into each other, either. When Hange finally stretches their arms and calls it a night, Mike doesn’t ask any questions when Levi doesn’t stand to leave with them. He closes the door behind himself pointedly, quietly.

“Well,” Erwin says, when they’re gone. “That was fun.”

He stands to pack the cheap booze back into a drawer in his desk. Levi’s knife is still in there, he realises, rattling around. The man has never tried to steal it back. He wonders why not, and then decides not to think about, slightly drunk, and very tired. “Hange is…” Levi says, and then trails off. He seems equally exhausted.

“Yes,” Erwin agrees, shutting his drawer. “They are.”

“And Mike,” Levi starts, sounding uneasy, like he’s on the cusp of an apology.

“He’s not usually so chatty,” Erwin remarks. “You must really get his back up.”

“Why?” Levi asks.

Erwin shrugs. He has a few ideas. “I think,” he says, heavily, trailing back to the table, “you probably scare him. Or threaten him,” he considers, although Mike isn’t really the jealous type. “He used to be the strongest there was.” He puts one hand in his pocket, lifts the other to Levi’s face. “Who punched you?” He asks. He lightly traces the purple swelling along the upper line of his cheekbone, around to his brow.

Levi’s eyes are shut, his head tipped back. “I won’t be going back down there again,” he says. He seems to pull up his eyelids, as if it’s hard to keep them open. “You shouldn’t either,” he warns.

“I see,” Erwin murmurs. “Are you no longer welcome?”

“I was never welcome,” Levi mumbles, leaning into his hand, “less so, now that I wear the wings on my back.”

Erwin rewards his honesty with a stroke of his thumb. “You’re welcome here,” he says, “despite what Mike says.”

Does he imagine Levi’s little shiver, the small ripple of his shoulders? Levi seems to flick his eyes tentatively up to Erwin’s face, like he’s watching him secretly. Erwin doesn’t really know what to make of it.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s fine,” Levi tells him, twitchy. He bats away his hand. “The doctor already put salve on it.”

“Which doctor?”

Levi waves a hand. “Some doctor down there. A do-gooder from Shiganshina. Fancies himself a martyr, I think, says he likes to give out free medical care.”

“Does he have a death wish?”

Levi snorts. “Never underestimate the risks of a man with an inflated sense of self,” he says, pointedly.

“I’ll try not to be offended,” Erwin scoffs, without bite. “You’re so goddamned bratty, Levi.”

“If you wanted a lapdog you shouldn’t have picked me up in the slums,” he snaps back, equally toothless, like neither of them really want to fight, but feel as though they need to keep up the appearance.

“So who punched you?” Erwin asks again. “They must have been working pretty hard to get a hit in.”

Levi sighs. “There was more than one,” he admits. “And they were – uh, thugs,” he frowns. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with it.”

“Thugs,” Erwin repeats. He thinks, most of Levi’s past is as mysterious to him as it is to Mike and Hange. He knows more, sure; there was a man named Kenny, and his mother, who was a whore. Furlan and Isabel and presumably the criminal things they did together. Now, the famine, another part of an incomplete picture. But it bothers Erwin that he can’t trace him – large gaps that Erwin can’t fathom. It’s irritating to him, in fact, that he doesn’t know. Levi knows about him: his mother, his father, his dreams, his regrets.

“I wish you’d tell me more,” Erwin says, quietly. “I want to know you, Levi.”

Levi is staring up at him. Erwin realises, his hand is still pressed to Levi’s cheek, absently. “What?” He asks, like he doesn’t understand what the words mean. “More about what?”

Erwin blinks. He realises, he can’t say, _I want to know your history, I want to know every part of you,_ because then he would have to explain why, and the answer to that question is not one he knows. He supposes it scares him, the unknowing, the lack of records, the lack of… if Levi doesn’t have roots, then how will he be remembered? “I – just you, I suppose,” and he slips his hand back into his pocket, quickly downs the rest of the whiskey left in the glass on the table. “I’m sure you have lots of interesting stories to tell.”

“I don’t,” Levi says flatly, and while Erwin usually isn’t afraid to push, there’s something about his tone that makes him realise there can be no more prodding tonight, not after Levi’s already been so forthcoming on his orders.

“Well, it helped Mike understand, regardless,” Erwin tells him. He sets the glass back on the table. “It’s good to talk to people, Levi. Make friends. Hange is very fond of you.”

“I think Hange is fond of everybody,” Levi mutters, leaning back in his chair. “Of everything, even.”

Erwin laughs, quietly. He could tell Levi that Hange is one of the sharpest people he knows, that they have an unparalleled clarity of vision, that they’re utterly ruthless in the pursuit of their own goals. Instead, he says: They’re eccentric,” and leaves it at that.

It appears they’ve run out of conversation. A pity. Erwin chews absently on his thumbnail, and then frowns. “Oh,” he remembers, and leans his boot against Levi’s knee, pressing lightly.

The look on Levi’s face is something from boredom to irritation. He knocks Erwin away. “You’re going to scuff my pants,” he warns.

“You shouldn’t agitate Shadis like that,” Erwin warns. He picks up his foot again and balances it on the seat between Levi’s legs. “I’m not omnipotent.”

Levi snorts. “Oh, don’t worry,” he mocks lightly, “I didn’t think you were.” He’s surprisingly relaxed, Erwin thinks, arms folded loosely across his chest, knees parted and legs stretched out in front of him.

“It would be problematic,” Erwin continues, “if he decided you were more trouble than you were worth.”

“Aren’t I?”

Erwin feels his lips twitch. “I’m not sure yet, really.” He raps his knuckles against the table, makes Levi jump. “Well then,” he says, briskly, “shall we discuss what you came here for?”

“What I came here for?” Levi frowns. “How do you know what I came here for?”

“It’s not a lesson night,” Erwin deduces. “And you don’t generally seek me out for any other reason.”

“Any other reason,” Levi sighs, “right. That’s fair, I guess.”

“Unless,” Erwin corrects, unsure of himself, “unless maybe you were here for some… other reason.” He takes in the bruise on Levi’s eye. It will only get worse over the next few days, he thinks. It’s a good, solid hit.

“No,” Levi tells him, abruptly. He kicks Erwin’s foot off his chair and stands, crossing the floor and seating himself in Erwin’s lap like he belongs there, like it’s a natural thing, imposing, each thigh straddling Erwin’s hips. “Your instinct is right,” he continues, “I’m here to fuck you,” he says, and there is a part of Erwin that wonders if Levi is trying to convince himself, first.

“You clean?” Erwin asks him.

“Yeah,” Levi tells him.

“I have – the grease, it’s in my desk,” Erwin says, breathlessly. “If you want.”

“You’ll pull out,” Levi orders.

Erwin tilts his head in a way he thinks might be endearing. “I’d rather not,” he tries.

“I’ll need to have another bath,” Levi laments.

“God,” Erwin groans, genuine frustration, “you’re so damn – tightly wound, Levi, highly-strung – “

“I like to be _clean,”_ he enunciates against Erwin’s lips.

“Not just the cleaning, the damn – “ Erwin huffs, “you think everyone’s mocking you, everyone’s got it in for you – “

“Historically, they do,” Levi scorns. “You think this is the best way to convince me to let you come inside me?”

Fucking _hell,_ just the idea of it, makes Erwin tip suck in a breath, tip himself back in his chair, heels scrabbling against the floor and hips rolling up against Levi’s. “Please, Levi,” Erwin tries, “c’mon,” and he goes for all that charm he used to have, barmaids and girls from the town, back when he was nineteen and strapping and could come twice in one night. He lets his hands ruck up Levi’s shirt, roam the planes of his back.

“Ugh,” Levi says, and actually does look a little disgusted, “you’re drunk.”

“Doesn’t that make it better?” Erwin asks him, “You know, I get a little looser when I’m drunk, Levi, I say and so all kinds of things I wouldn’t do otherwise,” he tries, in what he hopes is a seductive voice.

Levi looks like he’s deliberating. He’s holding Erwin’s fate in his hands. “You should ask nicely,” he decides.

“Nicely?”

“Politely,” Levi corrects, and because he never smiles, Erwin can’t tell if he’s joking. His eyes look serious, he thinks, flat and calm and intent. “Ask me for what you want, and then I’ll decide.”

Erwin is not really a begging man. He tries to think of any time he’s had to beg for anything, let alone for sex. Generally – and he’s not being prideful – but generally, in his experience, these things work the other way around. He realises he can’t imagine Levi begging for anything, either, and maybe that’s why he’s so – so – desperate for him, always. The idea that he’s having to win him, piece by piece, time by time. He briefly tries to picture it: how would Levi beg, if he could? Could he get onto his knees, would he rest his cheek on Erwin’s thigh, look up at him with no shrewdness in his eyes except desperation? Or would he straddle Erwin the way he’s straddling him now, curl his fingers in his shirt, plead with him. He tries to imagine what Levi’s voice would sound like. The shape of his lips, his brows, _please, Erwin,_ he would say, whimpering, desperate, _please come inside me._

Erwin pushes a hand between their hips to palm himself, grunts. God, he thinks. He would do anything for that. To own Levi that way, to have him reduce himself like that, just for him, for his eyes only. He can’t really imagine it, that’s the truth, and that makes it sweeter, almost. A total fantasy. He would do anything for it, he thinks again.

“God, Levi,” he says, thickly. “You’re going to ruin me, did you know that?”

“Tell me,” Levi prompts, like he also believes Erwin is too above needing to beg. For anyone else: yes. But for Levi…

“Please,” he says again, “Levi. Let me come in you.”

“Sweeter,” Levi orders.

“God, _Levi,”_ Erwin breathes, and he takes his face in his hands, pulls him closer. “Let me come in you. Please. I want you to feel me inside you, I want to feel… I want to know I’m inside you, understand?” He presses a kiss to his chin, along his jaw, wonders if Levi is simply uninterested or if his stiffness is forced. He doesn’t say, _I want to ruin you,_ because he doesn’t think Levi wants to hear it. He doesn’t tell him, _I want to dirty you, mess you, peel back your layers until I find your roots_

“Tch,” Levi mutters, and his skin slightly clammy, damp bangs falling in front of his face. “All that reading and you can’t do better than that?”

“Please,” Erwin whispers against his lips. He raises his hips, and wins one grunt out of Levi, more of a gasp, rising with the force of Erwin’s thrust, gripping his shoulders for support. “I want to come inside you,” he tells him, and plucks at his lower lip with his teeth, “so you feel me there, warm. So it drips outside you, drips here,” he tells him, earnestly, cupping the inside of one of Levi’s thighs, “and you can go back to your bed, while I’m still on your skin, and when you finally wash me off you’ll have to remember that this happened, and you’ll remember I begged you to let it happen.”

Levi’s face does not change, but he swallows. “Yeah,” he says, roughly.

“Yes?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and starts to peel off his shirt, fingers nimbly attacking the buttons, pushing it down his shoulders. He kisses him like that, the cuffs of his shirt pressed to Erwin’s face, his nails digging into his cheeks. He pulls away too soon, dismounting and padding to the bureau in the corner, shucking off his pants as he goes. He knows where the grease is kept, pitching it at Erwin. He bends over the arm of the couch, one leg braced up against the cushions, a hand pulling apart his cheeks. He looks over his shoulder. “Do it,” he tells him, brusquely.

There is no romance with Levi, Erwin knows by now. He can only imagine what the other man gets out of this, a fulfilment of a basic need, perhaps. Clinical and detached enough that the sight of him pulling himself open for Erwin’s eyes doesn’t even look lewd. He worries he’s embarrassing himself in his eagerness, trying to warm up the grease on his skin, sliding his fingers between Levi’s ass before slipping one finger inside him. He’s gathered that Levi does not particularly enjoy this part of the process, something about the way he’s gripping the pillows with his fists, the tightness of his shoulders. “Sorry,” he mumbles, stupidly, trying to comfort him with a hand against his hip. Levi doesn’t comment, just shifts his hitched leg higher, pulls himself wider.

He coats himself in the grease, first, working it down his cock while he braces himself on Levi’s lower back, lining up. The first push is always exquisite; Levi is tight, he goes slow, gentle, lets himself open Levi up. The other man takes it, uncomplaining as always, his thighs trembling slightly. The only sound he makes is a huff, burying his head into the seat of the couch.

So Erwin eases into him, then half-way out, the forced slowness a unique form of torture. He wants to chase his own pleasure, he wants to reach that point where Levi seems to forget himself, just slightly, lets noises slip past his lips, fucks back on him with eagerness.

Erwin groans. _God,_ he wants to say, _Levi, you’re fucking perfect,_ but he can’t bring himself to, doesn’t know how that would be received. He can only guess that Levi is enjoying this from the way the toes propped up on the couch curl, and how he seems to exhale on each thrust. He grips Levi’s hips, huffs. “Like this?” He asks, to make sure, and Levi nods.

“Good,” he tells him, and Erwin is rewarded, barely, by the tiny hitch in his voice.

He fucks him like that, their skin slapping loudly in the empty office. It’s worsened by the quiet; Erwin’s panting breath, and Levi’s stubborn silence. When he comes, though, he has to push his fist into his mouth, head thrown back. As if to help him, Levi squeezes around him, grinds himself against Erwin’s hips. And for that, Erwin knows, he deserves a reward.

He taps his ass, twice, encouraging him to crawl forward onto the couch. “Roll over,” he tells him, breathless, following him along the length of the couch, watching him spread himself loosely, limbs all relaxed and shaky. Levi hasn’t come, but he has dribbled pre-come along the leather. Erwin wants to smear his face in it, he wants to see him clean it with that pretty pink tongue, and in the post-orgasm clarity, the impulse repulses him; the very idea, Levi would kill him, and he would deserve it.

He buries his face between Levi’s thighs, kisses the short line of hair that dips from navel to groin, feels Levi shiver despite himself, back arching. His heels knock against Erwin’s shoulders. “Talk to me,” Erwin tells him, tasting the sweat in the gap between his thigh and balls.

“Mmm?” Levi presses. He sounds frustrated, like he’s afraid to open his mouth.

“I want to hear you, you know,” Erwin says, his drool smearing Levi’s perineum. “You don’t always have to be so quiet.”

“Shut up,” Levi orders, smacking a heel against Erwin’s shoulder, but Erwin thinks he might have hurt his feelings.

“There’s no shame,” Erwin breathes, stroking each thumb down the slick parting of Levi’s cheeks, “in feeling good, Levi.”

“I didn’t say there was,” Levi replies, rolling his hips upwards, a little, urging himself closer to Erwin’s mouth. He must know what Erwin’s about to do – perhaps he’s had others do this to him, and the thought sours him, slightly, the idea that someone else might have been able to win moans out of Levi while he’s still relegated to the occasional sigh, a fist-in-mouth grunt. He presses a kiss just above Levi’s opening, swollen, raw. Erwin wonders what that feels like – he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. But he’s suddenly embarrassed by the thought, and almost irritated at the notion that he doesn’t even know if he could ask Levi what it feels like, or if he would be willing to try, because despite everything the man is still almost a stranger to him in so many ways.

“Don’t,” Levi says, suddenly. He picks up his head, the tip of his nose flushed pink.

“No?” Erwin questions.

“Just – don’t,” Levi orders, letting his head fall back against the cushions.

Erwin kisses his thighs instead, his abdomen, hungry for the sweat on his skin. Levi rarely tastes of anything other than neutral soap. When he reaches his cock, it appears his patience runs out; he smears his hips upwards, against Erwin’s chin, and Erwin takes him in one.

He finishes in Erwin’s mouth. Erwin wipes his lips against the back of Levi’s thigh and catches him, head propped up against the armrest on the opposite end of the couch, eyes shut and brows arched, lips open in a soundless gasp. He’s playing with his left nipple, pinching and rolling it between his thin fingers. _So he does know how to take his own pleasure,_ Erwin says to himself, and then thinks that it’s a rather cruel thing to think. Of course Levi does – he wouldn’t seek him out if he didn’t.

He pulls open his eyes, as if dazed, staring up the ceiling. He seems to feel Erwin’s eyes on him; he drops his hand from his chest, quickly, like he’s irritated to have been caught. But he doesn’t make any move to leave, immediately, which means Erwin might steal some pillow talk out of him, yet. He likes hearing Levi talk. Not just because the man has a unique view of the world which he appreciates, is brutally honest, incredibly incisive. But because he so rarely talks at all, and those things he says after evenings like these are as open and candid as he has ever heard him be.

He leans his cheek against Levi’s thigh, rests his head near his softened cock. He can feel his pulse thrumming through his body, slightly elevated, twitching against his skin. He doesn’t speak, and just listens to that, the proof that Levi is living, breathing, safe and warm in this room, on his couch. He feels his eyes start to close. _Don’t sleep,_ he warns himself, but it’s hard not to. He thinks about those times, more than a decade younger than he is now, his back pressed to Mike’s in an empty dorm. Merkel was dead. Jonas was dead. Lena was dead, but she didn’t share a room with them. _I need this,_ he thinks to himself, distantly, achingly. Just tonight. A moment of weakness, just tonight…

Levi stirs beneath him. Insistent. “Erwin,” he says, not harsh, not soft, either. Just his name. _Erwin._

“Stay,” Erwin asks, softly.

Levi clambers off the couch, slightly bow-legged, walking stiffly. Erwin watches himself dripping down the backs of his thighs. He tosses on his shirt, pulls up his pants and stuffs his underwear into his back pocket. Erwin sits himself up, watches him, thinks he’s already made his desires clear and there’s nothing more he can say.

Levi pauses at the door, looks over his shoulder. He opens his mouth, seems to think better of what he’s about to say, and stops himself. “Thanks,” he says instead.

“Thanks?”

“Yeah,” he tells him. “That was very – good,” he says, stiffly. “Took the edge off. Hit the right spot,” he nods.

“Well,” Erwin feels like one of the wrung-out rags Levi uses to clean himself with after, “you’re welcome, I suppose.”

Levi nods again, like that is satisfactory, as if Erwin has said something he agrees with. When he leaves he shuts the door very lightly, cushioning the blow so it locks neatly with just soft thunk and a gentle ‘snick’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey besties idk if u know but if u look up denial in the dictionary you see a picture of erwin it's crazy


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